A brief history of the beginning of the Cadastre

The creation of the Cave Cadastre can be seen to mark the passage from the caves exploration as an end to itself to that done with technical and scientific aims within national and regional speleology. The idea of collecting and cataloguing all the caves explored by the men of the Commissione Grotte della Società Alpina delle Giulie was born in 1892 with the creation and subsequent publication of the list of caves which they visited. With the arrival of E. Boegan, the Cadastre took shape and started to grow, going from 22 caves in 1892 to 250 in 1900, and then to 430 in 1915. After the First World War the Cadastre of the Società Alpina delle Giulie became the official Cadastre of Venezia Giulia and was made public with the presentation on "Alpi Giulie" and "Le Grotte" magazines as well as with the printing of extensive monographs ("2000 Grotte" in 1916, "Grotte della Venezia Giulia" in 1930 and "Il Timavo" in 1938).

After the Second World War, the data in the cadastre on the new caves discovered one by one in the Carso and around Gorizia were published by CGEB, firstly on "Alpi Giulie" magazine (continuing a tradition started in the late 1800’s), then as supplements to "Atti e Memorie" and finally in the "Quaderni Catastali".

In the 60’s, Regional laws on Speleology (L.R. 27/66) created the Regional Cave Cadastre, entrusting its management to the Società Alpina delle Giulie. Initially, data from the Historic Cadastre of the CGEB (which were updated) were entered into the Regional Cadastre.
Afterwards speleologists gave to the Regional Cadastre the data collected by discovering and surveying new caves within Friuli Venezia Giulia.