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In the countryside of Southwest France, a little over two hours east of Bordeaux, lies the Dordogne region. Here the Dordogne River winds between golden limestone cliffs and oak woods. Canoes drift past hilltop castles, and medieval villages tuck themselves into the rock.

Just to the north, its quieter tributary, the Vézère river, carves a valley of its own. Hidden in its cliffs lies the region’s greatest treasure. Thousands of years before the first castle, Ice Age artists filled its caves with bison, horses and mammoths. This is the prehistoric art of the Dordogne. No other corner of Europe holds so many traces of that distant past.

In fact, in 1979, UNESCO added the Vézère Valley’s decorated caves and prehistoric sites to its World Heritage List. Lascaux is the most famous of them, but it is only the beginning. For anyone curious about where human creativity began, this valley is a must-see.

Where to See the Prehistoric Art of the Dordogne

Site	What you’ll see	Original or replica?	Good to know
Lascaux IV (Montignac)	A full-size copy of the entire Lascaux cave, plus a museum workshop and galleries	Replica	Open nearly all year; book early, especially English tours
Lascaux II (Montignac)	The first replica (1983): the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery	Replica	Open seasonally; small groups; not wheelchair accessible
Font-de-Gaume (Les Eyzies)	More than 200 painted and engraved animals, many in several colors	Original	Online booking required; very few visitors per day
Combarelles (Les Eyzies)	Hundreds of fine engravings of horses, mammoths and other animals	Original	Online booking required; narrow, low passages
Cap-Blanc (Marquay)	A frieze of horses sculpted in relief into the rock	Original	Online booking required; short forest path
Rouffignac (Rouffignac-Saint-Cernin)	More than 250 figures, about 160 of them mammoths, seen from an electric train	Original	Open spring to early November; commentary mostly in French. Inquire in advance about rarer English tours.
National Museum of Prehistory (Les Eyzies)	Tools, carvings and skeletons from the valley’s sites	Real collections	A perfect first stop to set the scene
Pech Merle (Cabrerets, Lot region)	Spotted horses, stenciled hands and prehistoric footprints, about 25,000 years old	Original	About 90 minutes from Sarlat; open spring to early November; limited daily visitors

Want to visit these prehistoric painted caves?
Join us on our 8-Day Bordeaux & Dordogne small-group tour!

Why 17,000-Year-Old Paintings Are Worth the Trip

We understand the hesitation. A cave sounds cold and dark, and paintings of horses can sound like a school field trip. Then you stand beneath a black bull 17 feet long, painted by lamplight, and something shifts.

These artists worked in conditions we can barely imagine. They ground ochre and manganese into paint and blew pigment through hollow tubes. They built scaffolds to reach ceilings and worked by the glow of stone lamps. Some of their paintings cover entire walls. Yet daily life was a constant struggle for food, warmth and safety. That these people still found the time to venture deep underground and paint is remarkable. We still don’t know why they did it. Yet layer upon layer of figures suggests they came back again and again.

Among the Lascaux cave paintings, two bison stand tail to tail, one overlapping the other. It is one of the earliest attempts to show depth in art. Pablo Picasso is said to have left the cave remarking, “We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.”

Then there is the sheer span of time. These paintings are roughly 17,000 years old, older than farming, writing or the wheel.

“Standing in front of these paintings is the closest we will ever come to meeting our ancestors.”

Lascaux Caves: The Original and Its Replicas

1940: The Discovery of the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory

The story of Lascaux begins with a dog. On September 8, 1940, a teenager named Marcel Ravidat was walking on the hill above Montignac. Suddenly his dog, Robot, disappeared into a hole left by a fallen tree. Marcel tossed a stone inside and heard it roll on and on, deep into the hill. Local legend told of a secret tunnel leading to the nearby manor. Could this be it?

Four days later, Marcel returned with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agniel and Simon Coencas. It was 1940, and France had just fallen to Germany.

The boys widened the opening and slid down into the darkness. Then their lamp lit up the walls. Bulls, horses and stags seemed to gallop across the rock in red, yellow and black. They had stumbled into a gallery no one had entered for thousands of years.

The boys told their schoolteacher, Léon Laval, who alerted Abbé Henri Breuil, the leading prehistorian of his day. Breuil soon arrived and gave Lascaux the name that stuck: the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory. Nearly 6,000 figures fill the cave. Horses and stags mingle with aurochs, the giant wild cattle of the Ice Age.

Lascaux opened to the public in 1948. By the mid-1950s, up to 1,200 visitors a day were bringing breath, heat and humidity underground. Lichen and crystals began to spread across the walls, and the cave closed in 1963. It has never reopened. To protect the Lascaux cave paintings, only a handful of scientists may enter, for a few days each month.

To share Lascaux without harming it, France turned to replicas. Lascaux II opened in 1983, followed by the traveling Lascaux III in 2012. The complete Lascaux IV arrived in 2016.

Lascaux II: The First Replica

France first opened Lascaux II in 1983, about 200 meters from the real cave. It reproduces the two most spectacular spaces, the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery. Through the 1970s, painter Monique Peytral recreated the animals by hand. She used natural pigments, applied with the same techniques as the prehistoric artists.

For more than 30 years, Lascaux II was the only way to experience Lascaux, and visitors loved it. Many left moved, even knowing they had seen a copy. Still, Lascaux II had two limits. It showed only part of the cave. And its success drew large crowds to the same hill as the fragile original. Lascaux II still welcomes visitors seasonally, in small groups, for a more intimate visit.

Lascaux IV: The Complete Cave

Prehistorian Yves Coppens, who chaired the project’s scientific committee, believed the public deserved to see Lascaux in its entirety. In December 2016, the International Center for Cave Art opened Lascaux IV on the same hill. It is the only full replica of the original cave, every chamber and every figure at full scale.

Lascaux IV is as close to the real cave as science allows. Laser scans of every wall guided the work, and the result is accurate to within a millimeter. For three years, sculptors and painters at the Périgord Facsimile Workshop recreated every relief by hand. They applied natural pigments, the same minerals the prehistoric artists used, layer by layer. Some details took hours for a few square inches. They even reproduced the wear that time has left on the original walls.

Step inside and the illusion is complete. The air is cool and humid, the light is dim, and sound is muffled, just as in a natural cave.

What Happened to Lascaux III?

Lascaux III is not a cave at all, which surprises many visitors. Since 2012, it has been a traveling exhibition that carries Lascaux around the world. It centers on five exact replicas of panels from the Nave and the Shaft. The exhibition has toured Italy, Japan, Canada and many other countries. The numbers simply follow the order of creation: Lascaux II in 1983, Lascaux III in 2012 and Lascaux IV in 2016.

What You Experience at Lascaux IV

Your visit begins on a lookout above the Vézère Valley. From there you enter the replica. A guide then leads you through three great highlights.

• The Hall of the Bulls. This grand first chamber holds 36 animals, led by four huge black aurochs (the wild ancestors of today’s cattle). Horses, stags and the cave’s only bear join them. One bull is the largest animal yet found in cave art.
• The painted galleries. In the Axial Gallery, aurochs, horses, deer and ibex cover the walls and arch across the ceiling. The artists needed scaffolding to reach them. Further on, the Nave holds the crossed bison and a frieze of swimming stags.
• The Shaft scene. At the bottom of a deep pit lies the cave’s most mysterious image and its only human figure.
  
  Accessibility: Lascaux IV is the easiest visit in the valley. An elevator and flat paths make it fully accessible to wheelchairs, and the center holds France’s official “Tourisme & Handicap” label. Lascaux II, by contrast, is not wheelchair accessible.

The Mystery of the Shaft

The Shaft lies at the far end of the cave, at the bottom of a drop of about 20 feet. In the original cave, no one could see the painting without climbing down. Archaeologists even found a piece of prehistoric rope nearby, probably used for the descent.

The scene itself is strange. A stick-figure man with a bird’s head seems to fall backward before a wounded bison. Beside him, a bird perches on a stick, while a rhinoceros walks away.

So why paint something almost no one would ever see? Some researchers read it as a hunting accident or a memorial. Others see a shaman in a trance, traveling to the spirit world. One astronomer even proposed a map of the summer stars. Perhaps it was never meant for visitors at all, but for the spirits, or for the artist alone. Thanks to Lascaux IV, you can now see what its creator kept hidden.

After the Cave: The Lascaux Workshop

Many visitors are surprised to find that the visit continues long after the cave. The Lascaux Workshop is a bright museum space that is a highlight in its own right. Life-size copies of the great panels fill the room. With a tablet in hand, you can light up details and see how each animal was drawn. It answers all the questions the dark cave leaves you with.

A theater, a film and a gallery linking cave art to Picasso and Miró complete the experience. Lascaux IV holds three stars in the Michelin Guide, and it celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2026.

Original or Replica: What Changes?

Some purists turn up their noses at a copy, yet the emotion inside is real. What you give up is the thrill of standing before paint applied 17,000 years ago. In return, you gain all of the Lascaux cave paintings, explained by a guide, without risk to the originals.

Our advice is simple: see Lascaux IV, then pair it with an original cave. Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac give you that thrill of authenticity.

Font-de-Gaume: Original Color, Seen by Very Few

Just outside Les Eyzies, a steep path climbs to a narrow opening in the cliff. This is Font-de-Gaume, often called the last cave with original multicolored paintings still open to visitors. Polychrome (painted in several colors) is the word you will hear from the guides.

The cave holds more than 200 painted or engraved figures. Bison dominate, alongside horses, mammoths and reindeer. Researchers place them in the Magdalenian period, around 17,000 years ago, and the decoration was recognized in 1901.

Inside, the guide’s light slides across the rock, and the bison seem to breathe. The artists placed them where natural bulges in the stone shape a shoulder or a belly. To protect the paintings, time inside the cave is limited to 30 minutes.

Accessibility: Font-de-Gaume is the most demanding cave on this list. A staircase and a steep, narrow path of about 400 meters lead up to the entrance. Inside, the passage is narrow and dim, and you will need to stoop in places. The floor is uneven, there is no seating, and the air stays around 57°F.

Nearby: Combarelles and Cap-Blanc

A few minutes from Font-de-Gaume, the Combarelles cave was recognized in 1901 by the same team of prehistorians. Here the artists did not paint. They engraved. More than 600 figures line a narrow, winding corridor about 800 feet long. Horses dominate, joined by reindeer, mammoths, cave lions and bears. Look closely and you will also find some 50 human figures, a rarity in Ice Age art. As your guide’s lamp moves along the wall, fine lines appear out of the bare rock.

Cap-Blanc offers something different again: sculpture. About 15,000 years ago, artists carved a frieze of horses directly into the wall of this rock shelter. It stretches some 43 feet, and the largest horse is more than 7 feet long. Bison and ibex join them. In the soft light, the animals seem to step out of the stone.

Cap-Blanc also holds a surprise for American visitors. In 1911, workers found the skeleton of a young woman buried in the shelter. Known as the Magdalenian Girl, she was acquired by the Field Museum in Chicago in 1926. A replica rests on site.

Both sites are run by the same national monuments team, and both require online booking.

Accessibility: Combarelles is one of the more physical visits in the valley. Its corridor is narrow and low, so you will stoop in places, and the light is dim. There is no seating, and the air stays around 54°F. Cap-Blanc is gentler once inside, since the frieze sits in a shelter at ground level. Getting there takes more effort, though. A winding forest path of about 200 meters slopes steeply downhill, which means a climb on the way back. The ramp at the welcome building is also steep. Plan about an hour at each site, and wear sturdy shoes. Travelers with limited mobility should contact the sites before booking.

Rouffignac: The Cave of a Hundred Mammoths

About 9 miles (15 kilometers) north of Les Eyzies, deep in quiet woodland, lies the cave of Rouffignac. It is one of the largest decorated caves known, with about 5 miles (8 kilometers) of galleries spread over three levels.

Visitors explore it the gentle way, aboard a small electric train that has carried guests since 1959. The train travels deep into the hill and pauses beneath the drawings. Because you stay seated, it suits travelers who prefer not to walk far.

As the train rolls on, you meet the cave’s two former residents. One left claw marks on the walls. The other left mammoths on the ceilings. The bears came first, long before any artist. These were not ordinary bears. Cave bears were a giant Ice Age species, as big as the largest bears alive today, and males could weigh well over 1,000 pounds. Although they vanished about 24,000 years ago, their traces remain everywhere. Here and there, you pass the hollows they dug in the clay to sleep. Their scratches cover the rock, some high above your head. Seeing them up close is as astonishing as the paintings, and a little intimidating.

Thousands of years after the bears, the artists arrived. They sketched more than 250 animals in black, about 160 of them mammoths. Woolly rhinoceroses, bison, horses and ibex join them. One frieze shows ten mammoths walking in a line.

The highlight is the Great Ceiling, crowded with animals drawn overhead in a low chamber. Here the train stops, and you step off to look at the drawings up close. The cave’s own team dates the art to about 16,000 years ago. These are the originals, not copies. Of everything you see in the Dordogne, this may be the moment you remember most.

Accessibility: Rouffignac is the easiest of the original caves, since the train does the walking. The visit lasts about 70 minutes, and you cannot leave before the end. The cave stays around 55°F, so bring a warm layer.

“Rouffignac’s mammoths are the real thing, drawn by hands that knew these animals alive.”

Further Afield: Pech Merle

Pech Merle lies outside the Dordogne, about 90 minutes southeast of Sarlat in the neighboring Lot region. Still, for travelers who want more and don’t mind the drive, it is well worth the trip. At Pech Merle, the famous spotted horses are even older than those of Lascaux, painted about 25,000 years ago. They stand back to back, surrounded by stenciled hands. Look down, too: the footprints of a prehistoric teenager have survived in the clay. The cave opens from spring to early November and limits its daily visitors, so book ahead.

Les Eyzies, the World Capital of Prehistory

Les Eyzies sits where tall cliffs crowd the Vézère River, about 13 miles (21 kilometers) from Sarlat. The village calls itself the world capital of prehistory, and it has earned the title. In 1868, workers uncovered the first Cro-Magnon skeletons in a rock shelter here. The shelter’s local name gave us the word Cro-Magnon. It comes from the Occitan cro (hollow) and Magnon, probably the name of a local landowner. Today the term describes the first modern humans in Europe, who lived here about 28,000 years ago. Unlike the Neanderthals, an older human species that vanished about 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons were Homo sapiens like us.

Around the village lie at least 37 decorated caves and shelters, the highest concentration in Europe. Only a handful are open to visitors. Font-de-Gaume, Combarelles and Cap-Blanc, described above, are the best known. Even more remarkable, prehistory as a science was largely born in this valley. In 1864, a carving of a mammoth on mammoth ivory was found at the nearby La Madeleine shelter. It proved, for the first time, that humans had lived alongside mammoths. Two great periods of prehistory even take their names from local sites. The Mousterian is named after Le Moustier, and the Magdalenian after La Madeleine. Later, pioneers like Abbé Breuil, nicknamed the “Pope of Prehistory,” and Denis Peyrony turned the valley into a living laboratory.

The National Museum of Prehistory occupies the old castle built into the cliff above the main street. Its collections come largely from Vézère Valley sites. They make a perfect introduction to the prehistoric art of the Dordogne. On its terrace stands Paul Dardé’s 1931 statue of a prehistoric man. Many visitors call him Cro-Magnon, though the sculptor intended a Neanderthal.

Beyond the Caves: Exploring the Périgord Noir

Most visitors pair the prehistoric art of the Dordogne with the other treasures of the Périgord Noir. Sarlat-la-Canéda makes a natural base, with golden stone lanes and one of France’s best-loved markets. Its medieval center is among the best preserved in France. Cobblestone streets wind between honey-colored mansions under steep roofs of lauzes (flat limestone slabs), typical of the Dordogne. It is a must-see on its own. Staying here lets you enjoy it in the quiet of morning and evening, then set out on easy day trips.

From Sarlat, the Dordogne River is only a few minutes away, and castles line its banks. Beynac and Castelnaud face each other from opposite cliffs, old rivals from the Hundred Years’ War. Castelnaud now houses a museum of medieval warfare. Nearby, the Château des Milandes tells the story of Josephine Baker. Between them, La Roque-Gageac clings to the cliff, while the hanging gardens of Marqueyssac look down on it all. A short drive away, the gardens of the Manoir d’Eyrignac are among the loveliest in France.

Back in the Vézère Valley, the story of early humans continues outside the caves. La Roque-Saint-Christophe is a vast cliff shelter where people lived from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages. Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère, one of the most beautiful villages of France, sits in a bend of the river. Underground, the Gouffre de Proumeyssac reveals a huge cavern glittering with crystals.

On the water, the valleys show another face. Canoes and kayaks can be rented on both rivers for a few hours or a full day. It is great fun, but it is also a real workout, so choose a stretch that suits your energy. For a relaxing ride, step aboard a gabarre (a traditional flat-bottomed wooden boat). For centuries, gabarres carried timber, walnut oil and wine down the Dordogne to Bordeaux.

A simple rhythm works well. Visit one cave or museum in the morning, then a village or castle after lunch. Three or four days around Sarlat let you enjoy prehistory and the Middle Ages without rushing.

Practical Tips for Visiting the Painted Caves

• Book early. Lascaux IV time slots fill quickly in summer, especially English tours. Font-de-Gaume admits only a small number of visitors each day, and online booking is required.
• Dress for the cave. Font-de-Gaume stays around 57°F and Rouffignac around 55°F, all year. Bring a warm layer, even in August.
• Wear sturdy shoes. Paths to the original caves can be steep, and cave floors are often uneven.
• Leave the camera and bag. Photos and bags are not allowed at Font-de-Gaume, and children must be at least seven.
• Plan around the calendar. Lascaux IV is open nearly all year. Rouffignac opens from spring to early November, and Font-de-Gaume’s ticket office closes on Saturdays.
• Check the language. Rouffignac’s commentary is mostly in French, so ask in advance about English tours. Our 8-day Bordeaux & Dordogne tour always has an English language tour.
• Stay in Sarlat. It sits about 17 miles from Lascaux and 13 from Les Eyzies, with a lovely medieval center.

Discover the Painted Caves With Us

The prehistoric art of the Dordogne comes alive on Days 7 and 8 of our 8-Day Bordeaux & Dordogne Tour. After a free morning at the Sarlat market, we admire the Lascaux cave paintings at Lascaux IV. Then we continue to La Roque-Gageac, one of the most beautiful villages of France.

On the final day, we explore the National Museum of Prehistory and the prehistoric site of Le Moustier. We also stop in front of La Roque-Saint-Christophe, carved into the cliffs above the Vézère. In the afternoon, we board Rouffignac’s electric train for an English-language visit of its original mammoth drawings. All entry fees and guided visits are included, and our groups never exceed 16 travelers.

Explore the 8-Day Bordeaux & Dordogne Tour →

Keep Reading

• Dordogne, France: 6 Reasons Why You Must Visit
• Dordogne (Périgord) Map & Guide
• Sarlat-la-Canéda, One of the Most Beautiful Villages of France
• Saint-Émilion: The Stunning Medieval Wine Village Carved in Rock
• Rocamadour: The Cliff-Hanging Village
• Fall in Love with Bordeaux, One of the Most Elegant Cities in France

À bientôt, mes amis

Julia