Wait Till You Hear About Italy's Underground Cathedral

Buy a hat and hold the heck onto it, because this is goooood

Hall of the Labyrinth in the Temples of Damanhur

Beneath the rocky, alpine foothills of an area north of Piedmont, Italy, lies a valley called the Valchiusella, which is mostly populated by sheep. It is also home to Gran Paradiso Park, contiguous with the French Vanoise national park, snugged up next to the alps. It’s raw, beautiful territory, but hardly an obvious choice for a “convergence of mystical energy”. And yet, in August of 1978, a twenty-eight-year-old Torinese named Oberto Airaudi—”Falco”—began digging a massive underground temple beneath an ordinary house in an ordinary suburb about thirty miles from Turin. He excavated by hand.

Soon, Falco recruited others who, for fourteen long years, worked in alternating shifts. They did so in secret, which is itself a remarkable feat in a small town where everybody’s business is your own. To disguise the sound of their labors, they played music and pretended to throw parties.

Falco needed to keep his vision a secret from local authorities for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was they’d never let him do it. What could he say? That ever since childhood, he’d dreamed of building a subterranean cathedral? How do you even apply for a permit for such a thing?

Excess dirt and debris was furtively shoveled into cars, driven out, and then dumped in the middle of the forest. What started with twenty-four volunteers swelled to a thousand, not only excavating at this point, but also architecting, designing and painting a structure of incandescent beauty, deep within the bosom of the earth.

Falco’s vision was also to create an eco-society based on the principles of peace and human potential. Whether he actually succeeded in that goal is subject to debate. His utopian society, the Federation of Damanhur, or “city of light”, encompasses 800 people who live in communal housing, have their own constitution, coded dances, specific currency, but are accused of inflicting on their members the same psychological and physical abuse typical of many sects.

Was this mistreatment at Falco’s behest? We don’t know. He died in 2013 at the age of 63. A “serious illness”, the papers called it.

But when the Italian police finally showed up in 1992, Falco was still a relatively young man of forty-two. The Temples of Humanity, of Damanhur, were only 10% completed, by Falco’s estimate. Rumor had it that once the local authorities found out about the temples, they threatened to detonate the entire mountain if Falco didn’t let them inside to inspect. When three policemen and a public prosecutor were finally admitted into the complex, they apparently stumbled from one magnificent chamber to the next, awestruck, unable to account for what they were seeing.

Each handcrafted room, some with ceilings over 25 feet high, was covered in mirrors, murals, or gold leaf. On walls, floors, ceilings, not a cubic inch was left unadorned. The authorities knew they were beholding something otherworldly, a masterpiece, that must never be destroyed.

The Blue Temple, the oldest hall, is used to meditate on social matters.

The Hall of Water, designed to honor the Sacred Feminine, with blue as its dominant color.

Hall of the Earth, dedicated to the male principle and to all living things.

The Hall of Mirrors, dedicated to music and the sky.

The Hall of Metals, which takes inspiration from the Damahurian belief that every age of mankind bears a relationship to metal.

The Hall of Spheres, much of which is covered in 24-karat gold leaf.

The Hall of the Labyrinth is dedicated to the relationship between the human and the divine. Each of the sixteen windows depicts a deity that humankind has worshipped over the centuries.

For those of you whose imaginations are captivated by Falco’s vision, the Temples are open to the public by appointment. For further information, click here.

Whether Falco and his followers were—and are—cultists or visionaries perhaps isn’t the point. What they achieved, in secret, over a span of so many years, without so much as a professional engineer or an architect to guide them, is worth coming to Italy for. It’s not everyday that an erstwhile insurance salesman realizes his dream of building a series of psychedelic, subterranean temples meant to establish a new civilization of human.

That alone is worth the price of admission, wouldn’t you say?

Have you been lucky enough to visit the Temples of Damanhur? After seeing the photos, are you now determined to go? Let me know in the comments section below.