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Ear of Dionysius

The Ear of Dionysius (Italian: Orecchio di Dionisio) is a limestone cave carved out of the Temenites hill in the city of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily in Italy. Its name, given by the painter Michelangelo da Caravaggio, comes from its similarity in shape to the human ear; it has also been linked to a legend that the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse engineered or used the cave's acoustic properties to amplify the voices or screams of prisoners interred and tortured there.

Cave data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

More caves in Italy

  1. Grotta del Gelo125 m deep
  2. Frasassi Caves5 km
  3. Blue Grotto0.1 km
  4. Abisso Bonetti
  5. Abisso di Malga Fossetta

Other notable caves worldwide

  1. Mammoth Cave · Australia686 km
  2. Sistema Sac Actun · Mexico119.2 m
  3. Lechuguilla Cave · United States489 m
  4. Optymistychna Cave · Ukraine20 m
  5. Veryovkina Cave · Georgia2,212 m
  6. Krubera Cave · Georgia2,199 m
  7. Sarma cave · Georgia1,830 m
  8. Clearwater Cave · Malaysia109 km