Reed Flute Cave

The Reed Flute Cave also known as "the Palace of Natural Arts”is a landmark and tourist attraction in Guilin, Guangxi, China. It is a natural limestone cave with multicolored lighting and has been one of Guilin’s most interesting attractions for over 1200 years. It is over 180 million years old.

                                              Lake inside the cave, with artificial lighting

The cave got its name from the type of reed growing outside, which can be made into flutes. Reed Flute Cave is filled with a large number of stalactites, stalagmites and other rock formations. Inside, there are more than 70 inscriptions written in ink, which can be dated back as far as 792 AD in the Tang Dynasty. These aged inscriptions tell us that it has been an attraction in Guilin since ancient times. It was rediscovered in the 1940s by a group of refugees fleeing the Japanese troops. Nowadays, multicolored lighting artificially illuminates the cave.


Guilin sits on the banks of the Li River in South Central China, surrounded by dramatic karst peaks and flowering gardens. The splendors up top have their counterpart down below: Descend into Reed Flute Cave for sublime scenes over 180 million years in the making. A surreal collection of stalactites and stalagmites crowd a nearly 800-foot-long cave that’s been drawing sightseers for a very long time indeed. Inscriptions dating from 1,200 years ago in the Tang dynasty adorn the walls (we’d call that ‘graffiti’ now). And while we don’t exactly know what the lighting scheme was for those folks, today’s lighting director is doing a stellar job using color to enhance the subterranean wonderland.