Limestone cave system within Gibraltar’s Old St. Michael’s Cave complex.
Leonora’s Caves is a limestone cave system in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, located within Old St. Michael’s Cave and accessed via its auditorium. A scree slope leads to an engraved entrance. Long linked to myths of bottomless pits and passages to Africa, the caves remain largely unspoilt.
Leonora’s Caves is a limestone cave system in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, situated within Old St. Michael’s Cave. Access is from the St. Michael’s Cave auditorium, where visitors descend a scree slope to reach an entrance marked by an inscription on the rock reading “To Leonora’s Caves 1867”. The exact discovery date is unclear, but graffiti on stalagmites and columns dates back to 1801, and reports of passages leading off St. Michael’s Cave suggest exploration in the 1700s by British troops. The cave system was long believed to be a bottomless pit and was associated with a myth of an underwater passage linking Gibraltar with North Africa, supposedly used by Barbary macaques to reach the Rock from Morocco. In reality, Leonora’s Caves has substantial depth but is not bottomless, and difficult access has helped keep it largely unspoilt. Leonora’s Caves was used as a show cave in the nineteenth century, with accounts describing candlelit stalactites and a descent considered challenging but manageable, especially to the Main Chamber. The caves contain breccia with bone, and remains found include an ox discovered in 1958. The system has never been completely archaeologically examined.
