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.