Nerja Caves

53rd Edition of the Nerja Caves Festival on YouTube

July 17, 2012
Costa del Sol East, Costa del Sol News, Nerja News, What's on Costa del Sol East
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Cuevas de Nerja, cultura, culture, music concert, Nerja Caves, What's On, YouTube

The 53rd edition of the Nerja Caves Festival commences today, 17th July.

The chances of any unsold tickets are extremely low, but from experience they can sometimes be obtained by queuing on the day an hour or two prior to each concert at the ticket office outside the caves.

If you simply can’t attend this year, the Nerja Caves Foundation will be showing each night’s concert in HD quality on their official YouTube channel the morning afterwards:

Nerja Caves Foundation on YouTube.

Spring Music Concerts in the Nerja Caves

June 9, 2012
Costa del Sol East, Nerja News, What's on Costa del Sol East
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Cuevas de Nerja, cultura, culture centre, nerja, Nerja Caves, What's On

A series of Spring Concerts in the Caves of Nerja commenced 27^th May and will run through until 17^th June.

This is a new initiative by the Nerja Caves Foundation to promote the Nerja Caves with a series of music concerts in addition to the traditional summer concerts each year in July.

The next concert in the series is this Sunday 17^th June, at 11.00 am and again at 1.00 pm, in the “Sala de la Cascada” with classical music dedicated to Antonio Vivaldi. Nerja residents can gain free entrance to the concerts.

The Nerja Caves Museum is also open on Sunday from 4.00 pm with free entrance and can be found in the Plaza de España situated behind the Nerja town hall in the centre of town.

Paintings discovered in the Nerja Caves could be the oldest ever found

February 8, 2012
Nerja News
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Cuevas de Nerja, Nerja Caves, Spain, tourism

The cave could contain the oldest cave paintings of humanity.

The ex Minister for Employment under José María Aznar, Manuel Pimentel, has recently taken part in a Spanish TV series on the Cuatro channel, ‘Cuarto Millenio’ to talk about the paintings found in the Nerja Caves.

He told the audience that recent carbon dating had shown that the paintings found in the caves are much older than previously thought. The data indicates that they are more than 40,000 years old, and that would make them oldest in Europe. They could even be the oldest cave paintings of humanity.

The curator of the caves, Antonio Garrido, stated that the carbon dating research is a multi-discipline project of conservation and research which started in 2008, and is helping in the study of the extinction of Neanderthal man, and his possible living together in the cave with Homo Sapiens.

Organic matter was taken from close to the paintings in the upper galleries of the caves, known as the Sala de Cataclismo, and sent to the United States for dating, which in both cases came back at more than 40,000 years. The researchers are now trying to establish whether the remains that were dated were in the cave before it was inhabited.

Although these paintings are in an area inaccessible to the public, a reproduction of them can be seen in the History Museum of the Caves situated in the Plaza España in the centre of Nerja.

The Nerja Caves were only discovered in 1959 by local people from the nearby town, and were officially opened to the public in 1961. Today, they are one of the most visited tourist attractions in Spain. Each summer concerts are organised in the caves, offering an amazing visual and acustic experience of some of the world’s most famous orchestras, ballet and Spanish guitarists, such as Pace de Lucía back in 2007.

The zone from Nerja to Gibraltar is considered by researchers to be the last area inhabited by Neanderthal man, before his extinction. There are also other caves nearby in Rincon de la Victoria, situated just east of Malaga.