There is an insane tourist attraction where you travel 700ft into a volcano’s magma chamber.
Thrihnukagigur is a dormant volcano near Reykjavik in Iceland. It has not erupted in over 4,500 years.
It has been included in Time Out’s list of the world’s coolest and weirdest underground attractions, alongside a salt cathedral in Colombia and a theme park in Romania.
Located in the Blue Mountain range, the volcano is the only one in the world where visitors can take a lift 700ft down to the magma chamber.
The magma, which would normally fill the chamber between eruptions, is believed to have drained away – much to the bewilderment of scientists.
Usually, this would lead to the collapse of the volcano but this has not happened to Thrihnukagigur.
The chamber is enormous at over 3,000 square metres. To get the scale, the Statue of Liberty could stretch her arms out with room to spare.
It opened in 2012 for tourists and many marvel at the colour of the chamber’s walls with mineral deposits providing vivid shades of red, yellow, green, and blue.
Tours operate in the summer with Thrihnukagigur only accessible by foot, with a short uphill hike reportedly easy for those with a reasonable level of fitness.
The chamber was discovered in 1974 by cave explorer Árni B. Stefánsson who was lowered in by his friends to explore.
Then in 1994, Stefánsson’s brother Einar and one of his friends Björn Ólafsson started to explore the cave, making several expeditions with Árni, where they made daring attempts to map out the gigantic cavern inside the volcano.
Iceland is a volcano hotspot, being one of the most active regions in the world with eruptions every three years on average.