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When Tosya Gharibyan asked her husband to dig a basement under their house to store potatoes there, she had no idea that the underground labyrinth that he was eventually going to produce would be One of the main tourist attractions of Armenia. in the village of Arinj, outside the capital, Yerevan may not look like much, but today, it attracts visitors from around the world after 23 years of age. love by the late husband of Mrs. Gharibyan, Levon Arakelyan
. In the cold and tranquility, Ms. Gharibyan leads tourists through corridors that connect seven rooms adorned with Romanesque columns and ornaments like those on the facades of medieval Armenian.
Unstoppable
"Once he started digging, it was impossible to stop," she said about the project that began in 1995. "I I am much disputed with him, but he became obs »
Builder of training, Levon worked 18 hours a day – stopping only to take a nap then rushing to the cave, confident that he was guided "by the sky". "He never drew up any plans and told us that he saw in his dreams what he should do next," said his widow
. For more than two decades, he has dug the space of 3,000 square feet, deep 21-meter strata of volcanic rocks – only using hand tools.
"My primary memory of childhood is the strong blow of my father's hammer heard the night of the cave," said his 44-year-old daughter Araksya.
At first he had to pierce an outer layer of basalt black, but a few meters deep, Levon reached a softer tufa stone and the work progressed. He pulled out 600 trucks of rocks and dirt, using only hand-held buckets. Levon died in 2008 at the age of 67, after destroying the last wall that separated two tunnels
'Amazing place'.
A decade after the completion of the project, Ms. Gharibyan also runs a small museum commemorating her husband's work. in the village of some 6000 people. The underground complex has several badogues in the world.
An eccentric man named William Henry "Burro" Schmidt spent more than three decades digging a half-mile tunnel to haul gold across a granite mountain in California.
In Ethiopia, a man named Aba Defar began carving churches on the mountainside after claiming divine inspiration.
Today, the Armenian cave is prominently featured in travel brochures, regularly attracting visitors. Milad, a 29-year-old Iranian tourist, calls it an "amazing place".
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