Grotte di Pastena

The entrance of the cave (from nando.roma.it)

The first description to the cave appeared in 1894 in Enrico Abbate’s Guide to the Province of Rome. The swallow hole was explored by the CSR on 24 April 1926 while the resurgence was explored in 1927 by G. Dusmet, C. Franchetti, and P. Pietromarchi. During the Second World War, thousands of refugees fleeing from the surrounding villages found shelter inside the cave. Speleological exploration resumed in 1963, when Lamberto Ferri Ricchi and the cave divers of the URRI, after several attempts between 1963 and 1968, succeeded in connecting the two caves by passing through the sumps from both the swallow hole and the resurgence.

Inner part of the cave (from laciociaraitaliana.com)

In the late 1960s, the astrophysicist and speleologist Vittorio Castellani of the URRI Group of Rome and Giancarlo Guzzardi of the CAI Rome Speleological Group reported the discovery of engravings believed to be of ancient origin. The find was made during a “recent training exercise organized by the Speleological Section of the National Alpine Rescue Corps. During the operation, while several volunteers were engaged in rescue simulations involving supposedly injured cavers, some participants used the waiting periods to explore the fossil branch of the Pastena Cave system. Their investigations reportedly led to the identification of numerous wall engravings inside a large underground chamber, described as "clearly anthropogenic and of considerable antiquity". However, no further documentation or detailed study of these alleged rock engravings was ever published, and their existence has never been conclusively confirmed.

Grotta di Pastena, picture of "Grotticella W2" (b); the terrace with the stone structures and an upside-down bowl (c–d).

Systematic archaeological interest in the cave began in the 1980s, when surveys identified pottery fragments, lithic tools, and anthropogenic deposits within the entrance chamber and along the fossil galleries. Subsequent excavations, carried out from 2000, revealed evidence of repeated human occupation ranging from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Overall, the archaeological evidence from Pastena Cave indicates a long-term prehistoric use connected with ritual behavior, funerary deposition, and symbolic practices involving fire and food offerings. The site is therefore regarded as one of the most important cave contexts for understanding prehistoric ritual activity in southern Lazio during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Newspaper article published in Corriere della Sera on 9 November 1981 concerning the alleged discovery of Paleolithic paintings in Grotta di Pastena (full article).

A curious episode occurred in 1981, when two renowned Italian scholars, Professor Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern (1935-2026) and Marcello Zei (1920-2000), visited the cave following reports of the discovery of a prehistoric paintings, supposedly Paleolithic, depicting a large bison struck by two spears together with positive handprints. Although impressed by the quality of the painting, both scholars expressed skepticism, since the image was located within a niche in the large entrance chamber — an area that had been visited by thousands of people every year since the nineteenth century. The newspaper article also reported the words of the elderly cave custodian:

Newspaper article published after 9 November 1981 by Carlo Alberto Pinelli, in which the author disproved the alleged antiquity of the supposed Paleolithic bison painting.

The story was later disproved in another newspaper article by Carlo Alberto Pinelli — a multifaceted figure known as an alpinist, filmmaker, and environmentalist — who revealed that the paintings have in fact been created by him, or rather with his collaboration, approximately eight years earlier, in August 1973. At that time, together with Folco Quilici (1930–2018), he was filming scenes for the television series L’alba dell’Uomo (“The Dawn of Man”). The bison painting formed part of a deliberately reconstructed sequence in which a group of speleologists accidentally discovered traces of Paleolithic cave art inside a cave.