Kocain Cave – Famous for its stalagmites and inscriptions

Kocain Cave is located within the borders of Dosemealti district of Antalya province. It is formed on an area of 36 decares in the eastern part of Indagi. Kocain Cave is formed as a result of a great collapse on Indagi. Kocain Cave has the distinction of being the cave that has the largest entrance, together with the largest gallery as a single whole piece in Turkey.

Kocain Cave

The entrance of the cave has a height of 29 meters and a width of 70 meters. In Kocain Cave, which has a length of 633 meters, there are columns with a length of 50 and 60 meters. The stalagmites of the cave reach up to 45 meters. Therefore, the cave has the feature of being the one with the longest stalagmites. There are various inscriptions just ahead of the cave entrance.

Until 1921, Italian archaeologists made many researches about the region and discovered many findings. However, some of the 29 inscriptions among the discovered finds do not survive until today. With the notice of a villager, Italian Archaeologist Giovanni Moretti and his team begin to examine Kocain Cave.

As a result of these studies, Giovanni Moretti draws a map of the cave and this map is recorded as the oldest map drawn in Anatolia. The second comprehensive investigation of the cave was carried out by Ankara University after 1946.

The speleological research of the cave was carried out in 1972 by French cavers together with a Turkish team. The inscriptions of the cave say that the cave had a religious function in the Early Christian Period.

Kocain Cave, which includes a water cistern from the Roman Period in the cave, is also a first-degree Archaeological-Natural Site.