Petralona Cave

Villagers looking for water found the cave in 1959, and a year later a shepherd discovered a human skull cemented into the cave wall by calcite. The Petralona skull belongs to an archaic human, usually assigned to Homo heidelbergensis, and its age has been argued over for decades, with estimates ranging from roughly 160,000 to over 500,000 years, which would make it among the oldest human fossils found in Europe. The cave itself runs about two kilometres, of which a few hundred metres are open, densely packed with stalactites, stalagmites and columns, and animal bones of cave bears, hyenas and lions have been recovered along with traces of what may be very early controlled fire. A small museum beside the entrance displays casts and finds.

What you actually see

• The formation chambers - dense stalactites and columns along the route.
• The skull find spot - the location where the fossil was embedded.
• The animal bones - remains of cave bears and other Pleistocene fauna.
• The site museum - casts, tools and explanatory displays.

When to go

Year-round; the cave stays cool and the visit works well on a hot day. Tours run at set intervals and are shorter in winter.

Honest expectations

Visits are guided and fixed in length, roughly forty-five minutes, with commentary mainly in Greek. The original skull is in Thessaloniki, not here, so the museum shows a cast. Dating of the fossil remains genuinely disputed among specialists.

Nearby

Afytos and the Kassandra peninsula lie south; Thessaloniki is under an hour north.