In an old manuscript, a local historian thus defined the Caves of Ara: “Temple of the fairies, cave of the sirens, favorite place of the sibyls”.
These words contain an ancient tradition that suggests the memory of archaic magical-ritual practices, preserved in the collective memory, also testified by the practice of collecting the "sass bianc" (quarzites) out of the bed of the Magiaiga stream, to draw energy and well-being from these stones.

The Ara Caves have always exerted a particular charm and attraction, not only as a destination for walks but also as a healthy place where in the summer frail children were brought so that they could fortify themselves.

The Magiaiga torrent crosses the Garden of the Caves which extends into a basin made up entirely of dolomites. Time and erosion have altered the morphology of the karst rock over the centuries and the Magiaiga stream, with its spectacular waterfalls, changes its structure day after day; even man in the past has contributed to altering it, however, without substantially affecting the internal part of the cavities, perhaps unconsciously respecting the ancestral memory of arcane rituals.

These caves attracted the attention of scholars who recovered, already at the end of the 19th century and in the last century, important paleontological and archaeological evidence.
In 1871, in the ossiferous breach near the caves, a jawbone, albeit incomplete, of the Rhinoceros Mercki (Rhinoceros of Merk) attributable to the Riss-Wurm interglacial was found. There were also important discoveries of Pleistocene fauna, always of rhinoceros and Ursus Spelaeus, as well as lithic artifacts "which can be supposed to be older than the typically Mousterian ones found in the caves" (F. Strobino).
The rather recent discovery of a pink flint blade attributable to the upper Paleolithic (Aurignacian between 40,000 and 30,000 from today), right in the most suggestive part of the cave, in the bed of the Magiaiga stream which comes out of a tunnel in the cave formed by karst erosion.

The traditions received and the finds found suggest that this place was once a site of hunting activity and the exchange of materials and goods.

The cave, originally closed, as evidenced by the large remaining arch, most likely became a sacred place with all the connotations of a water sanctuary, a suggestive hypothesis and a prelude to new research. Probably in pre-Roman and Roman times, ritual practices related to the feminine and vital element par excellence took place on this site: water.

Source: Ente di Gestione delle Aree Protette della Valle Sesia