Couple renovating 1850 Sicilian palazzo finds a hidden door leading to mysterious cave

When artist and photographer Marianne Pfeffer Gjengedal and her partner, Alex Molkom, began restoring their palazzo in Sicily, they expected plenty of dust and heavy lifting. What they didn’t expect was to uncover a sealed-off door hiding a secret beneath their home. Gjengedal, who goes by @sweetnpfeffer on TikTok, documented the discovery in a video that got over 660,000 views and 38,000 likes, calling it "a real mystery." "We noticed it when we went on the first viewing in June 2022. But it was brief and we didn’t think that much about it," Gjengedal told Newsweek.

As she explained in the video, the 1850 property sits above what was once an ancient stable, and at the back of the stable was a blocked-off door. When the family bought the house and got the keys in December 2022, they asked the previous owner about it. "He didn’t know anything about it," Gjengedal explained. Months later, as renovations got underway, they decided to find out for themselves. First, they had to deal with a swarm of flies in the stable, then Molkom chipped away at the stonework, creating a small opening just wide enough to slide in a camera. At first, all they could see was solid stone. "And then we discovered a man-made cave nearly filled with stone with a sleek, rounded ceiling," Gjengedal said in the video.

At first glance, it looked like rubble, but when Gjengedal showed her children, her oldest noticed something else. "What I thought was a stream of light was two eyes catching the reflection from my phone. I screamed, and a cold chill went down my back," she recalled. The family’s first thought was that it could have been a cat sneaking in from a neighbor’s basement. To get answers, they called in their architect, Sebastiano Pisana, who suggested the cave may have been filled during renovations decades ago. "If you want to remove, there’s no problem," he said.

The story captured plenty of attention online, sparking theories and stories from curious viewers, with some suggesting against the idea of opening the cave. @cedric.muscat wrote, "Could be an underground wartime shelter? Quite a few of those here in Malta, and some were interconnected with other houses and others connected to communal shelters." @kc17384 joked, "This would make an amazing movie start. Foreign American couple buys a house in Italy, they open a sealed door and uncover a long forgotten secret, which gets out and starts the apocalypse." Others shared similar discoveries. @yol.vanz commented, "A friend of mine bought a house in Italy and they also had a similar blockade in the cellar. It was a complete apartment under the house! They cleaned it up and now they have double the space!"

What the Gjengedal family discovered isn’t as uncommon as one might think. A 2025 systematic architectural review of historic houses pointed out that many older buildings hide unexpected spaces, odd layouts, or repurposed chambers that weren’t part of the original design. These "hidden patterns" often reveal themselves during renovations, just like the sealed door in their Sicilian palazzo. For now, Gjengedal and Molkom plan to clear the chamber and see what lies beneath. "We’re definitely emptying the cave to see what’s down there," she said, "Our house is 600 square meters, so it’s not like we need the extra space — we’re just way too curious to leave it as it is. Living above a cave without knowing what’s inside? No thanks."

You can follow Marianne Pfeffer Gjengedal (@sweetnpfeffer) on TikTok to follow along their journey.

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