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Description
The cave of Santa Barbara is located inside the mine of San Giovanni di Bindua, a hamlet of Iglesias, in the province of South Sardinia. It was discovered by chance in 1952 by a group of miners during the excavation of a shaft, which would have allowed them to take the extracted material from one level of the mine to another.

Until then unknown, because it was hidden inside the mountain, it opens up between the rocky layer of ceroid limestone and yellow silicified dolomite, Lower Cambrian formations dating back some 500 million years. The site can be reached through an intricate system of underground tunnels that can be travelled through by means of a small train that, after a distance of 700 metres from the entrance, leads to a lift that ascends along a shaft, about 150 metres above sea level.

The vast cave has among its special features tabular crystals of dark brown barite covering the walls and semi-spherical concretions of snow-white calcite with stalactites and stalagmites covered with aragonite eccentrics with columns up to 25 metres high formed over millennia.

Description
The cave of Santa Barbara is located inside the mine of San Giovanni di Bindua, a hamlet of Iglesias, in the province of South Sardinia. It was discovered by chance in 1952 by a group of miners during the excavation of a shaft, which would have allowed them to take the extracted material from one level of the mine to another.

Until then unknown, because it was hidden inside the mountain, it opens up between the rocky layer of ceroid limestone and yellow silicified dolomite, Lower Cambrian formations dating back some 500 million years. The site can be reached through an intricate system of underground tunnels that can be travelled through by means of a small train that, after a distance of 700 metres from the entrance, leads to a lift that ascends along a shaft, about 150 metres above sea level.

The vast cave has among its special features tabular crystals of dark brown barite covering the walls and semi-spherical concretions of snow-white calcite with stalactites and stalagmites covered with aragonite eccentrics with columns up to 25 metres high formed over millennia.