Gagernhöhle cave in Kelkhelm (near Frankfurt)

A very nice, very small cave near Frankfurt! On the way to the airport, even. I've been having layovers in Frankfurt and Munich many times, and always looked for the possibility of caves nearby, close enough to drive during the few hours. But nothing was ever close enough. But now when I was on a business trip to Frankfurt I found out that in the suburbs there's a cave, Gagernhöhle, that you can quite easily visit.

The coordinates are N 50.150202 E 8.452332. The cave is right on the side of a stream, the Liederbach and there's a nice foot bridge to cross over the stream. The cave is right next to buildings and roads as well, the easiest way to get to the cave is to park somewhere near the sports/playing field and walk 100 meters to reach the cave. 

The cave looks naturally, but is actually man-made, by Friedrich von Gagern, from the Gagern family well-known in the area.

More information about the place can be found from the Kelkheim Discover page and the Outdoordad page. The cave is also called Fritzens Ruhe or Fritzen's rest, for the memory of the Fredrich's passing in the battle of Kandern in 1848. Yet another alternate name the cave is Fuchshöhle, for Fuchs, who carefully carved the cave per Friedrich's instructions.

I also 3D-scanned the cave with my iPhone LiDAR Scanner (using the Polycam app, and converted to a map using my own software, Cave Outliner).

Here's the generated map:

A high-res PDF of the map can be found here. The 3D model itself in GLTF format is here and BLENDER format here, and if you want to rotate it on your browser screen, click here. But a fly-through video is also below:

More photos below.  First the information sign:

From inside the cave:

Cave from the outside:

A detail from the cave:

Model screenshot:

Path and stream leading to the cave:

The author, in a taxi in business clothes .. but I did change before hitting cave:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. 

Grotte delle Busserailles

Grotte delle Busserailles is a small show cave in Valtournenche in northern Italy, four kilometers down the road from the ski resort Cervinia. Actually, it is more of a deep gorge with the roof partially closed. The wonderful part of the cave is the waterfall falling down from the river to the deeper part of the cave. 

The cave is a show cave, open every day between 10 and 18, and the entrance fee is only 2.5€. Do visit, if you are nearby! I was skiing in Cervinia, had seen the signs for the cave before but didn't have time to visit on previous trips. Now I did :-)

There's a few parking spots right by the cave, and more 50 meters up the road, behind the previous curve. There's also a restaurant at the place, where they also sell tickets to the cave. In front of the building there are two medium-size potholes / devil's churns, and I think they also organize tours to look at the larger devil's churns under the building. I didn't have time for that on this trip.

For the less adventurous, maybe visiting the cave in the summer would be better. Now the place was quite wet, including dripping water from the roof in the cave itself. Also some rock chips had fallen down, probably due to the winter's freezing temperatures.

The coordinates are N 45.8996321 E 7.6166609. More information about the cave can be found from Wikipedia, Show caves of the World page, and here. The cave is 104 meters long.

Video:

Photos:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot, TGR. Photos and text (c) 2025 by Jari Arkko, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.