Unicorn Cave

The Unicorn Cave is the largest show cave in the West Harz, about 1½ kilometres northwest of Scharzfeld in the borough of Herzberg am Harz in central Germany. It is a karst cave developed in dolomite strata that is part of the Zechstein.

It was first mentioned in the records in 1541. In 1686 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz visited the cave and wrote a report about it mentioning the local trade with unicorn artefacts. In those days fossilized bones supposed to be from unicorns were ground and used for making medicine. In the 17th century Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg, wrote a newspaper article about the finding of some ancient animal bones in the Zeunickenberg, a Harz mountain near Quedlinburg, in which he held the opinion that the bones were the remains of a unicorn. Based on Guerickes writings Leibniz drew a fictional reconstruction of the unicorn's skeleton using the bones that had been found in the cave and published the drawing in his book Protagaea.

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