Monastic Cave

The Gorge, located in the Mostovo district of the Krasnodar Territory on the Gubs River, became famous not only for its natural beauty, but also for the so-called Mousterian period cave man sites found here. The main sites found are located about six kilometers from the village Barakaevskaya. Here the river cuts through the thickness of the limestone, forming a wide canyon up to two hundred meters deep. On its left northern bank there are numerous niches, grottoes and canopies, in which archaeologists found traces of Neanderthal presence.

The most famous and studied are the caves Monasheska and Guba canopy, located at an altitude of about seventy meters from the bottom of the canyon. The formation of these caves was due to the destruction of rock under the influence of weather conditions, it is believed that in the time of caveman their size was somewhat larger.

The monastic cave is formed by a wide rock canopy with a width of about thirty and a height of about thirteen meters and two corridors running along a crack in a karst massif with a length of twenty and ten meters. The name of the cave received from the hermit monks who lived in it in the Middle Ages. From the cave there is a beautiful view of the gorge.