Robbie Shone

May 16, 2024 | smithsonianmag.com | Yudhijit Bhattacharjee |Robbie Shone

Francesco Sauro first explored a cave when he was 4 years old. He was with his dad, a professor of geography, in the Lessini mountains, near the northern Italian village of Bosco Chiesanuova, where his father had grown up. His dad was also an amateur cave explorer, and the trip was a kind of preordained rite of passage. “The only memory I have about those caves is that I cried,” Sauro recalls.