This site was one I had never heard of before investigating the UNESCO sites of Israel, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.  I guess it really isn't featured in package tours because it doesn't have a strong religious connection, so in that way it is a lot less visited. But for our independent tour, it was an easy drive from Tel Aviv.

There are three main types of caves here: the more residential caves of Maresha, the Sidonian tombs, and the bell caves which are former chalk quarries. As a bonus, right across the road you get a Roman amphitheater, crusader ruins, and more.

We started our exploration with the caves of Maresha.  The park entrance gives you a nice guide to follow for your walking tour of the place. The highlight of the first part of the tour is the columbarium -- a surprisingly large complex of a grid of aisles with thousands of niches for raising pigeons. Continuing along the trail, you encounter caves devoted to ancient olive presses and a bathtub cave.  You can also walk to the top of Tel Maresha, the mound over the biblical city of Maresha. We did this, but it isn't that exciting.  Near the end of our trail is another really enjoyable complex of caves, which were mostly cisterns under the ancient villas. Today, they are interconnected below ground so you can explore up and down various stone staircases and along different side-cistern-trails, which was a lot of fun. Back outside, we also saw several spots where active archaeological digs were in progress, but didn't visit them.

After that, we walked back to our car and drove to the area of the Sidonian Caves. These were used as large burial chambers with multiple niches, from the Hellenistic period.  The beautiful murals of fanciful animals, etc. is what makes them worth visiting. (My photo is from one of these.) 

 

The last set of caves we visited were the Bell Caves. These were dug as quarries for chalk, used as stone building blocks. The caves were originally dug from the hole in the top, expanding into a bell shape as the excavators went deeper.  These are the most recent of the caves, dating to the Byzantine and early Arab centuries. Today, tourists enter at ground level, but the huge caverns are great to walk through and admire.

After finishing with the caves, we headed across the road to the Roman amphitheater.  The day we visited, there happened to be some military graduation ceremony taking place, so we couldn't enter the amphitheater itself, but we got nice views from outside. We went on and explored the remnants of the crusader church and fortress and the Roman bathhouse beneath it.

It's really a fabulous park, covering many centuries of ancient history. Visited January, 2018.