The Skotino cave (Greek: σπήλαιο Σκοτεινού) is one of the largest and more impressive caves among the hundred caves found in Crete.
It lies high on a hill Northwest of the village of Skotino, a few km inland South of Gouves. It's also known as Agia Paraskevi cave from the church dedicated to Saint Paraskevi built on top of it. It's 160m deep and 36m wide. The first archaeological examination on the site were carried out by Arthur Evans, the famous British archaeologist who unearthed and partially restored Knossos in the early 20th century. A more comprehensive exploration was carried out by French and Greek archaeologists in the 1960s. They found a considerable number of bronze and ceramic votive offerings, the oldest of them dating from the earliest Minoan periods, suggesting the cave was an important sacred shrine dedicated to a female fertility deity, presumably Britomartis. The cave was still used in Classical Greek and Roman eras, when the fertility goddess Artemis or her Roman equivalent Diana replaced the Minoan deity.