Eisriesenwelt

The Eisriesenwelt (German for 'World of the Ice Giants') is a natural limestone and ice cave located in Werfen, Austria, about 40 km south of Salzburg. The cave is inside the Hochkogel mountain in the Tennengebirge section of the Alps. It is the largest ice cave in the world, extending more than 42 km and visited by about 200,000 tourists every year.

Key facts

Cave.name: Eisriesenwelt
Cave.photo: Eisriesenwelt Werfen Austria 02.jpg
Cave.photo_caption: The interior of the caves
Cave.map: Austria
Cave.map_caption: Location of the caves in Austria
Cave.location: Werfen (Salzburg, Austria)
Cave.length: 42 km
Cave.elevation: 1,656 m
Cave.discovery: 1879
Cave.geology: Ice cave
Cave.entrance_count: 1
Cave.access: Public
Cave.show_cave: 1920
Cave.show_cave_length: 1,000 m
Cave.visitors: 200,000 (by year)
Cave.mapframe: yes
Cave.mapframe wikidata: yes

via Wikipedia infobox

~5 min read

Encyclopedic overview

6 sections

Contents

Geology
History
Visiting
Gallery
References
External links

== Geology == thumb|left|200px|Layers of zebra limestone under the cave The Tennengebirge mountains were formed during the late Tertiary period, during the Würm glaciation period of the Pleistocene. The mountain range, one of the massifs in the Austrian Alps, is the largest karst plateau in the Salzburger Alps, and the Eisriesenwelt is located at the rim of this plateau. Although the cave has a length of 42 km, only the first kilometer, the area that tourists are allowed to visit, is covered in ice. The rest of the cave is formed of limestone.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Eisriesenwelt” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.