Sfendoni Cave in Crete

Sfendoni Cave in Crete

Heraklion, Crete

Sfendoni cave is the most visited cave of the area, and is also the one with the largest area open to visitors. It’s full of stalactites and stalagmites of different colors following their mineral composition.

It’s located about 1h drive from Rethymno and from Heraklion. Roads are good so you can make it even with a Fiat Punto. Once you arrive there, you can leave the car in the parking lot of the cafe and buy the tickets directly there.

It’s 270 meters long, but only the first 140m are visitable. As opposed to Melidoni Cave, you can’t access the cave on your own. A guide will lead you for about 30 minutes through different rooms and halls while he/she explains to you some historical, geological and biological facts about the cave (quite interesting btw). Tours are made every 40 minutes and groups have a variable size.

The entrance fee is 5€. Although booking in advance is not needed we strongly recommend calling them the day before in order to know if a big group of tourists has already booked a specific time-slot, so you don’t have to wait for the next tour (a lot of local travel agencies offer tours with large groups).

Some of the rooms have very impressive rock formations, such as “The Parthenon” or “The Pipe Organ” rooms. At the very end of the area closed to the public there is the “Hall of the Lost Kid”, where the skeleton of a kid was found. This last section is sometimes frequented by speleologists.

If you like caves you can also visit Melidoni cave (more info here) or Chaisnopilios cave. They are more or less nearby.

The tour is interesting, but it loses its natural beauty when people from a tourist bus assault the cave. Like in every other cave, don’t touch the rock formations and don’t take pictures with flash.