Grotta di Matermania

The next section of the “good walk” stated “Knee joints permitting, take the hundreds of steps- and we mean hundreds (don’t worry you won’t have to go backtrack)- down to the Grotta di Matermania.” We decided our knees would hold out and started out along these paths. The trickiest part was that it was raining slightly and so it made the steps a little slippery as well as the leaves that had fallen onto the path. The second image is of the Grotta di Matermania- “an impressive natural cave where ancient Romans worshipped the goddess of Cybele every dawn.” Not very good shots but that’s all I had. It was dark in the cave and I bumped the ISO up on the camera and still only got a couple of images that weren’t blurry.

A little history on Grotta di Matermania from the Fodor’s book:

“Set in the bowels of Monte Tuoro, this legend-haunted cave was dedicated to Cybele, the Magna Mater, or Great Mother of the gods- hence the somewhat corrupted name of the cave. A goddess with definite eastern origins, Cybele did not form part of the Greek or Roman pantheon: worship of here was introduced to Italy in 204BC at the command of the Sibylline oracle, supposedly for the pupose of driving Hannibal out of Italy.”