REAL LIFE DUNGEON

"the authorities decided to seize the temples on behalf of the government"

For Role Playing hobbyists such as myself, the word "dungeon" means something different than to others. For most people, dungeon stands for a prison, a tower or something that the king throws someone into before proclaiming "off with their head!" For someone who plays games like Champions, D&D, or Runequest, dungeon means "an underground complex with monsters, treasures, traps, and unusual devices that adventurers plunder." That's where the first part of the title Dungeons and Dragons comes from.

These kind of dungeons are the realm of imagination, but there's someone in Italy that has made a dungeon of sort:

Here, 100ft down and hidden from public view, lies an astonishing secret - one that has drawn comparisons with the fabled city of Atlantis and has been dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World' by the Italian government.

For weaving their way underneath the hillside are nine ornate temples, on five levels, whose scale and opulence take the breath away.

Constructed like a three-dimensional book, narrating the history of humanity, they are linked by hundreds of metres of richly decorated tunnels and occupy almost 300,000 cubic feet - Big Ben is 15,000 cubic feet.

Called the Temples of Damanhur, they are the artistic work of a man named Oberto "Falco" Airaudi. From age 10 he had visions of a sort, he saw images in very specific, dazzling detail, and began work on them early, digging holes to learn about excavation in his parents' yard.

More bizarrely still, Oberto appeared to have had a supernatural ability: the gift of "remote viewing" - the ability to travel in his mind's eye to describe in detail the contents of any building.

"My goal was to recreate the temples from my visions," he says.

Whether madness or genius, he started work on the complex in secret in 1978. He and friends who shared this vision began digging under a home he purchased after making his fortune in insurance brokerage. Others from around the world joined in, and by 1991, nine chambers had been excavated. Nearly complete, they featured murals, mosaics, statues, stained glass windows, and even secret doors.

The police came at first investigating tax fraud, then learned of the tunnels and demanded entrance. Falco showed them the way in through the secret door to... well take a look at the pictures here

Madness or genius, the Italian government knew that despite there being no permits for excavation, they had something amazing on their hands. The government seized the property, then granted retroactive permits and now there's a university, schools, markets, vineyards, farms, bakeries, and homes as part of the complex. A mystical quasi-religious movement called the Damanhurians now attracts thousands of visitors to see their new age efforts and beautiful artwork.

There's even treasure: sculpture, even a coin currancy called "damanhurian credits" worth 1400 lira each. No monsters, though.

Courtesy Google Maps and some quick notation, here's where Damanhur lies, in the region of Italy known as Piedmont, up against the Alps.


Commenters at the Daily Mail give a feel for the kind of talk and philosophy of the Damanhurians, a mix of mysticism, time travel, architecture, and just good old fashioned nonsense:

Throughout history "the wise" have told stories, parables and painted icons for "those who can see". I understand human perception learns by recognising that which it already has present at some level within itself. It seems to me Falco has presented the world with a wonderful display of the interactiveness of All life,and that within humanity is the potential to unfold it's own fulfilment and enable the beauty of all creation to grow and expand to it's greatest fulfilment. Every aspect of this beautiful, wonderous dance orchestrated, in perfect harmony. As Lennon said, "Let it Be". The hall of mirrors was of particular interest to me as I have been worked with "Reflecting back" as a method to practically reduce "projecting" or blaming others or events for some of our difficulties in life. My friends often call me to do "The Mirroring" when they encounter things and people that frustrate them. Others will recognise other "hidden truths the halls depict. A DRAMATISATION OF PHYSICS.
-by Barbara Osborne


Mind-blowing to see such beauty. Always held personal belief that human minds are capable of far more than we are aware of if only we knew how to access our latent powers. The fact that the Universe is timeless and limitless makes one realise how small-minded we are in believing that we are the only intelligent beings in existence.
-by James Fenton


The whole concept is mind-blowing, magnificent photos. I would give anything to see these caves. The creator was truly inspired, and this has re-inforced my belief in the spirit world.
-by Pauline M Kent

Oberto Aurabi is the co-founder and primary idealogue of the Damanhurians, and the new agey holistic magazine New Life describes his ideas this way:

Over the years, Damanhur went secular and began multitasking. The baseline: "In a historical moment in which more and more peoples and races are extinguishing, making all mankind poorer in culture and diversity, Damanhur is creating a human group with its own artistic, philosophical and cultural expression, a new people based on the exaltation of the differences among individuals, differences made precious and irreplaceable by the pursuit of a common goal."

Stories and avowals of traveling through time usually demand a suspension of disbelief so extreme that only watchmakers, factory-floor timekeepers, intellectually-challenged teenage punks awestruck by idiocies of pulp science fiction, and idiot savant quantum physicists will not pillory you if you say that you've actually visited your grandmother when she was a bon lassie of l2.

Only once you are over this hurdle can you begin to give the Damanhurians a patient hearing. Airaudi is a sure-footed surname-dropper—Planck, Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, Einstein? Airaudi's loose-cannon intellect merely glances off quantum physics before haring off to rendezvous with "neutral nonevents linked to one another by a lace of aggregation and compression flux, a sort of unexpressed symmetry", and more of the same .

Which sounds interesting and impressive, but means nothing in the end. Still, in a way it is kind of fun, with the time travel and undergound temples and creativity. The interesting thing to me is that no matter how hard people try to stamp out the mystical, the spiritual, and the supernatural, it always squeaks out somewhere in some form, as if it's a natural part of humanity. Or part of the world that we can deny, but not eliminate.

Damanhur, Dungeons, Italy