Now that’s a man cave! 65ft-deep underground cave in Armenian village in Daily Mail’s spotlight

These fascinating photos show how one man painstakingly created a jaw-dropping basement under his house, using just a hammer and chisel.

Builder Levon Arakelyan spent 23 years crafting the incredible 65ft-deep, 3,000-square-foot subterranean space and he was even working on the project on the day he died in 2008, aged 67. He began working on it after his wife, Tosya, asked for a cool space for her potatoes. He got carried away. 

Today the hand-crafted cellar network in the village of Arinj in Armenia is open as a museum and New Zealand-based Radio Free Europe photographer Amos Chapple recently journeyed to the attraction to shed some light on it. 

Apparently Tosya no longer ventures into the cavern as she's scared of having a fall, so the cameraman went down there alone. 

Describing the cave, he told MailOnline Travel: “I went and scouted the place out with the lights on. I then went back up and asked Tosya to switch all the lights off and I would work down there alone to take photographs. 

“So being down there in the darkness was amazing - there was utter silence and darkness, and it was easy to get lost.

“At first though I was a little nervous - Armenia is earthquake-prone and in the deeper caverns the rock crumbled under my fingernails. 

“I tried to banish the thought of a collapse from my mind and just concentrate on photographing.”

The walls of the cave feature a mix of hard and soft volcanic rock and the temperature remains around 10 degrees Celsius all-year round. 

Լուսանկարների հեղինակը նորզելանդացի ճանապարհորդ, լուսանկարիչ Էյմոս Չեպլն է (բացի Լևոն Առաքելյանին պատկերող լուսանկարներից)

Լևոն Առաքելյանի կինը՝ Տոսյան, ներկայացնում է թանգարանում ցուցադրված նմուշները