Petralona Caves Chalkidiki Peninsula

The famous and very important Petralona Caves, also called the red stone caves, are a karst formation and are located on Mount Katsiska at three hundred meters above sea level, about one kilometer from the village of Petralona which is only thirty-five kilometers from the fascinating Thessaloniki.

The cave was discovered in 1959 by chance by a local shepherd Filippos Chatzaridis who, in an attempt to look for a source of water, saw a crack at the foot of Mount Katsika. Later two men ventured into the cavity and when they ascended they described a wonderful environment made of rooms and corridors and formations of stalactites and stalagmites of rare beauty that immediately intrigued the scholars.

In the same year, the Greek speleologist Ioannis Petrocheilos descends into the cave and finds numerous animal bones covered with cave coral, tools in bauxite, limestone and quartz which demonstrate the evolution of time and the fact that the cave had been occupied for a long time period. In 1960 Aris Pulianos undertakes an archaeological and anthropological research and on September 16, he brings to light the oldest human remains in Europe. A perfectly preserved skull called the “Petralona Skull” which, from the analysis with the thermoluminescence method, is dated to over 700,000 years earlier and placed in the temporal sense between Homo Erectus and Neanderthal Homo. The artifact was found in the eleventh layer of the cave formed during an ice age. In addition to the skull, traces of a hearth were also found, thus demonstrating the fact to put it all very surprisingly to the experts that the use of fire was already used by people much older than one could imagine.

Over the years, through the hard and constant work of archaeologists, the vastness of the area has been defined which is 10,400 square meters consisting of corridors up to two kilometers long with a constant temperature of seventeen degrees and rock formations in the shape of cacti, ponds of water and speleo themes with the most bizarre shapes that time and nature have shaped.

The Petralona Cave is called the Red Stone due to the color of the earth and the bauxite deposits that give it this shade. Its dating is in the Jurassic Mesozoic period and its sediments are separated by different stratigraphic levels.

In the room called the "cemetery of the giants" were found the remains of carnivores such as bears, lions, wolves, deer, rodents and panthers as well as the skeletons of about twenty-five different species of birds and sixteen of rodents, as well as fossils of amphibious fish, reptiles and mammals of all sizes. The wealth of organisms is considered one of the richest collections in all of Europe.

In 1974 a tunnel was dug to allow visitors to venture into prehistoric times, one hundred meters long, which starts from the natural entrance of the cave, with showcases on both sides containing ancient furnishings, bones and teeth of animals.

The Anthropological Museum of Petralona, opened in 1979, contains a multitude of objects found in the cave and you can also admire the replica of the Archanthropus mausoleum which is the section of the cave where the famous skull was found.

If you are coming from Thessaloniki just take the highway that leads to Kallikrateia, after 44 km turn right and in ten minutes you will arrive in Petralona.

If you are passionate about history it is certainly an unmissable place and to be included in the things to do in the Halkidiki Peninsula.