Bellamar Caves, Limestone cave system in Matanzas Province, Cuba.

Bellamar Caves is a limestone cave system in Matanzas Province spanning three kilometers of underground passages with 28 chambers. These rooms showcase numerous stalactites and stalagmites that took thousands of years to form as water slowly dripped and pooled inside the rock.

Quarry workers extracting stone for Matanzas's Teatro Sauto found the cave in February 1861. The quarry owner, Manuel Santos Parga, cleared debris, built a descent and lit several chambers, opening it to paying visitors on 22 November 1862. First called La Cueva de Parga, it was later renamed after the nearby Bellamar beach. It closed in 1939 and reopened in 1947.

The cave is named after the nearby Bellamar beach, not an estate; it was first called La Cueva de Parga after Manuel Santos Parga, the quarry owner who opened it to paying visitors on 22 November 1862. Guides point out the Salón Gótico, about 2,000 square metres, and the 12-metre stalactite known as the Manto de Colón.

Access to the galleries is via a staircase of 159 steps, so visitors should be ready for a sustained descent and climb. Sturdy shoes help on the uneven, damp paths, and a light jacket is useful because the underground air is cooler than outside.

Part of the cave, closed to tourists and left untouched, has been nominated to UNESCO as a natural underground crystallographic laboratory, with calcite formations around 25 million years old. Marine deposits found inside are dated to roughly the same age, evidence that the sea once flooded these galleries.