Travel guide Périgord Noir

The historic site of the Lascaux cave is now a sanctuary. We can only advise you to visit the International Center of Cave Art in Montignac. This is the facsimile equipped with a bull room and an axial diverticulum as well as many other tools to gain more knowledge about this cave and our Cro-Magnon ancestors. In Petit Futé we learn that : This new tourist structure offers visitors an almost complete reconstruction of the part of the original cave open to the public. It was designed from a digital clone that allowed to make shells on which artists have projected 3D images of the original cave. They then reproduced them identically with the same pigments and the same gestures as the men of prehistory to be closer to the original cave. We begin by visiting the facsimile. An elevator transports us on the roof of the semi-buried building, at 9 m height. In the half-light we go down little by little in the cavity and the light appears little by little. We really feel the coolness (13 °C to 16 °C) and the humidity. There is even a glimpse of the hole through which the discoverers passed in 1940. It is bluffing. We discover the Hall of the Bulls, the Axial Diverticulum, the Passage, the Apse and the Nave with all their wonderful paintings. At the end of the visit several spaces allow to go further in the understanding of the techniques of reconstitution. Thanks to the use of light, it is possible to discover drawings hidden in the stone. One also makes a tour of the cave world thanks to 3D projections. The establishment of this center aims to sanctuary the hill where the original cave is located. The site of Lascaux 2 remains open to private visits... In addition to Lascaux IV, inaugurated in December 2016 by President François Hollande, we suggest you visit just next to the original cave the first Fac Similé of Lascaux, named Lascaux II. A little further, on the other side of the Vézère valley, discover the Thot park. You will be able to meet animals which lived at the time of the man of Cro-Magnon: aurochs, stags, fallow deer, wolves bison, horses, goats and sheep An opportunity to learn more about this ancient, but not so distant, era.