![]() ![]() You don't have to do a long walk to see the drawings in this cave, you are taken in on an electric train. These are black line drawings and engravings, 158 of which are drawings of mammoths. Rouffignac Cave ( Grotte de Rouffignac), a few kilometres from the Vézère Valley, is a large cave with more than 8 km of galleries and more than 250 animal drawings from prehistoric times (over 14,000 years ago). The town of Les Eyzies, south of Montignac, has a good archaeological museum. Lascaux is the best known cave art site but there are others where you can visit the original cave, not a replica. Lascaux Cave is located near the town of Montignac in the Vézère Valley. Location: France - Novelle-Aquitaine - Dordogne - Montignac We also visited several of the smaller caves in the area, where you see the original paintings. Even though it is a replica, you are in a cave and the drawings have been reproduced exactly. We visited Lascaux II on a rainy day in May 2013. This reproduction took a team of 30 workers four years to complete at a cost of 66 million euros. With Lascaux 4, opened December 2016, the entire Lascaux cave has been reconstructed. Lascaux 3 was a traveling exhibition showing highlights from the site. It was located in a natural cave near the original. Lascaux II, which opened in 1983, reproduced 90 percent of the cave's wall art (the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery). The many visitors caused damage because of the carbon dioxide produced by breathing and the cave was closed in 1963. ![]() The cave was discovered in 1940 and opened to the public in 1948. There are over 2,000 drawings of animals and people. Lascaux Cave ( Grotte de Lascaux) contains prehistoric cave paintings from the Paleolithic period (17,000+ years old). I really liked this cave (I liked all the ones we visited). The cave is not large and you don't walk that far in the cave. It was a small group of 12 and our English-speaking tour guide was very good. Finally we joined the morning line and got tickets for an English language tour that morning. We tried to get tickets on the weekend, but they were sold out each time when we arrived during the day. Website: Prehistoric sites at Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in the Dordogne It is not deep underground like some of the other caves in this area. The cave is small and narrow and you may feel a bit claustrophobic. There is not much walking inside the cave. There is a short (500m) walk, mostly uphill, to the cave entrance. Tour: The guided tour takes about 30 minutes, but allow 10 - 15 minutes to walk up to the cave. On slower days you can drop in during the morning and get tickets for later that day. On weekends and high season, you may have to line up in the morning before they open (9:30am). Tickets: Purchase tickets at the on-site ticket office, on the edge of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac. Location: France - Aquitaine - Dordogne - Les Eyzies-de-Tayac Font-de-Gaume is located near the town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in the Vézère Valley. Small groups of people are taken on a guided tour of the cave. The Font-de-Gaume Cave ( Grotte de Font-de-Gaume) contains over 200 prehistoric polychrome cave paintings of bison, horses and mammoths. Font-de-Gaume is a smaller cave if you don't like being deep in caves. Both of those caves require you to walk deep into the cave to see the art. We visited Pech Merle on the way to our Dordogne stay and Niaux on another trip when we stayed in Carcassone.Īll these caves are interesting but if I had to pick one, it would be Pech Merle, or maybe Niaux. Pech Merle is east in the Lot department. Niaux Cave in south at the foot of the Pyreness. Two more significant cave art sites are outside of the Vezere Valley. We spent a week in this area, saw several caves and visited the museum. The other cave art locations are in the area - Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac. The main towns of the valley are Les Eyzies, where the National Prehistoric Museum is located, and Montignac, near the famous Lascaux Cave. There are others caves where you can visit the original cave, not a replica. Lascaux, the replica of a cave showing the prehistoric cave art, is here. It is home to several caves with prehistoric cave art. The Vézère Valley ( La vallée de la Vézère) in the Dordogne (in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of south-west France) has some of the most significant archaeological finds of the Paleolithic period (200,000 to 10,000 years ago) and many are open to the public. ![]()
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