The chalk here is soft enough to cut with hand tools and hardens on contact with air, and successive populations exploited that property for centuries. The result, around the ancient cities of Maresha and Beit Guvrin, is one of the densest concentrations of artificial caves anywhere: bell-shaped quarries opening high overhead through a single shaft of daylight, dovecotes with thousands of niches, olive presses, water cisterns, workshops and stables, all underground. Above them lie the remains of a Hellenistic town and of the Roman city of Eleutheropolis with its amphitheatre, and, cut into the hillsides, painted burial chambers left by a community of foreign merchants. Inscribed on the World Heritage List, the site is filmed in 4K with lighting designed for the underground spaces and aerial views of the pockmarked hills.
