Hypogea 2015 and 2017: a short, but very intense, history

In March 2015 at the National Research Council headquarters in Rome, Italy, the congress Hypogea 2015, an International Congress of Speleology in Artificial Cavities, was held. Organized by the Commission on Artificial Cavities of the International Union of Speleology (UIS) in co-operation with the local associations Egeria, ASSO and Roma Sotterranea, and under the auspices of UIS and the Italian Speleological Society (SSI), the congress was very successful. There were over 70 contributions from 11 countries that were organized in 8 different thematic sessions. As a result, a voluminous proceedings book of over 550 pages was printed and distributed at the congress, edited by Mario Parise, Carla Galeazzi, Roberto Bixio and Carlo Germani. The Italian experience left an indelible mark on the cavers interested in artificial cavities, and soon a proposal for organization of the congress in 2017 came from Turkey, in the remarkable landscape of Cappadocia. The work of preparation for the congress started soon after Hypogea 2015, and at the time of writing (December 2016) we are about to finalize the proceedings. These, once again, will be distributed as a nice volume that we hope will be another reference point for researches and activities in artificial cavities. In this contribution we summarize the activity so far completed, from the initial idea of Hypogea 2015, to the 2017 congress in Cappadocia. Aimed at moving further ahead, looking toward Hypogea 2019 ….