Guide
Astım Mağarası, the asthma cave, lies in the Hasanaliler quarter of the town of Narlıkuyu in the Silifke district of Mersin, six hundred metres north-west of the Cennet and Cehennem sinkholes. The cave runs two hundred metres and holds stalactites and stalagmites formed over thousands of years. Its air is believed to do good for people with asthma, which is where the name comes from.
The cave is entered down a spiral iron staircase, and its depth reaches about fifteen metres. Its formation goes back to the Tertiary period, and the cave says a good deal about the geology of the region.
Its interconnected galleries, two hundred metres in all, hold great stalactites and stalagmites of striking shapes built up from mineral deposits. Humidity reaches eighty-five per cent in summer and as much as ninety-five in winter.
Because visitors tie strips of cloth to the trees and bushes around the cave when making a wish, local people also call it the wishing cave.
The cave is about eighty-six kilometres from Mersin and twenty-three from Silifke. It is reached by turning north at the Narlıkuyu junction on the Mersin–Antalya road, and there are minibus services from Narlıkuyu.
The Cennet and Cehennem caves in the same area were formed when the roof of an underground void collapsed after chemical erosion by an underground stream. The Cennet sinkhole matters for religious travel as well, for the church of the Virgin Mary that stands within it.
