Located not far away from old Callatis, in a place where fishermen and sailors, smugglers and merchants met for thousands of years, Limanu cave has got a legend aura. It was a refuge during some attacks, hiding place for thieves, home for wanderers, secret place for religious rituals, ever since Neolithic era, through Dacian ancient times, Greek, Daco-Roman, medieval era. Its fame of “Treasure Cave” has easily spread. Beside the historic importance, Limanu cave has a great speological importance. It’s a phreatic cave, developed in horizontally layered limestone. The horizontal layers were fragmented by vertical joints. When the sarmatian limestone sank under phreatic level, the waters infiltrated along the rectilinear planes of discontinuity in the rock and dissolved, leaving behind a maze network with rectangular distribution formed by galleries with rectangular sections, surprisingly equal. Some researches consider that at least a part of these galleries were dug by men, in many places being clear the walls’ chiseling. Seen from above, the galleries network looks like the map of a city badly organized. The local folklore says the galleries from Limanu Cave might stretch from Limanu to Bulgaria or even Turkey! Limanu cave has no stalactites and stalagmites because there is no water infiltration from the surface. The cave is biospeological important because there is a rich invertebrate fauna whose main food source is the guano accumulation from the bats sharing the cave, especially during winter. In the cave can randomly be encountered other vertebrate: snakes, turtles, foxes, ferrets.
