Decorated cave of Pont d'Arc

February 2022 - after visiting Orange we drove through the marvelous Ardeche Valley. It should be on the Natural WHS list on its own. We stopped at numerous viewpoints to take good shots an memories back home. Of course we stopped at Pont d'Arc as well. The Natural Bridge on one side, the entrance to the cave in the back. A must-stop to see the actual core zone.

With my daughter I decided to enter as the Chauvet II theme park to get a better impression of the WHS. The visit took us several hours though. First the stone age exhibitions and finally the guided tour through the Replica.

Quite something. Not as disneyfied as I thought. It felt really authentic and my daughter was excited as well. Psst! We also took some forbidden pictures. Happy we ticked that one off. Lascaux is probably a similar experience. Now we still need to watch the Werner Herzog documentary.

Last weekend we watched the Werner Herzog documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the Chauvet cave (Decorated cave of Pont d'Arc), triggering this review since we visited the cave last summer.

Since the original cave is closed for visitors and one has to do with a replica cave, the documentary is the only way to admire the beautiful cave art. The replica cave is of course not the real deal, but we must admit that it does not feel fake and that they succeeded very well in copying the actual cave. Some time ago we also visited the Lascaux replica and we found this one the best of the two.

Nevertheless, we felt we could not tick off this site without at least visiting the real cave entrance. Starting from the Auberge du Pont d’Arc parking, we first tried the route as described by Solivagant (“Follow the edge of the vineyard for c 150m and then find a track on the left up into the forest”). The issue however was that there are several tracks to the left into the forest, so we took a different approach and followed the route as mentioned in http://baladesducrokoala.wifeo.com/vallon-pont-d-arc-et-grotte-chauvet.php. The “sentier qui commence sur des affleurements rocheux” is the signposted route which more or less starts from the road. At a certain point (quite soon), in a bend you can take a road which splits off from the main trail (“dans un virage en épingle, on trouvera un petit sentier qui file …

After the extensive review of the Cave of Pont D’Arc by Solivagant 2 months ago, I was afraid that there would be nothing left for me to write about! But I was happy to finally tick it off, as I had a painful 'near miss' last year. This time I first drove to the Cirque d’Estre where the real cave is located. At least I made it into the buffer zone (looking at the map, I suspect that the core zone starts behind the vineyards at the ridge?). Signs were all over the place to warn about wild boar hunters so I did not proceed beyond having a quick look at the Cirque and the Pont d’Arc opposite. I’ll continue this review with my experience of visiting the replica cave in late November.

I bought the ticket online about a month before, but there were still tickets left on the day. I was on the first tour on Sunday morning, at 11 am. They warn you to be there at least half an hour before – that’s because the tours do not start at the visitor entrance but at the ‘Caverne’ across the park. Not until 10.15 other cars started to appear at the parking lot and the entrance remained closed until 10.30. There were 15 other people on my tour, all French. The tour was conducted in French only and the guide skipped handing out the audio guides because of the small group size (a nice gentleman who …

Simply amazing to see how long humans have beenbeen practicing art. The guided tours are blissful (if you speak french) and you instantly forget that you are in a replica, because everything is so fascinating. 

So - we had visited the “replica” Chauvet Cave but had we really “visited” the WHS?  Now, each of us will have their own “rules” for deciding when to “count” a site as visited and I wouldn’t criticise anyone who “ticks” for the replica visit alone. But it did seem a bit unsatisfactory just to leave it at that since the replica is situated outside both the core and buffer zones of the inscribed site. Indeed it could have been situated anywhere – imagine a “Chauvet franchise” which could create additional replicas a la Disneyworld. The cost of the original was c $59 million – no doubt a further “Chauvet Asia” in China could be done far more cheaply. Would one have seen any less of the “WHS” if one had seen a replica in a location beyond France? (Some would argue - “Yes”, because the nearby “Pont d’Arc” could be considered significant for the site in terms of contributing to whatever “spiritual value” caused the Aurignacians to use the cave for paintings. But this wasn’t argued in the Nomination). And where would counting such distant replicas lead to in terms of what constitutes a WHS “visit”? We could have “World Heritage Parks” with replicas of numerous WHS and “holodecks” running virtual reality visits to others!

The creation of this replica as a “visitor attraction” hasn’t passed without criticism. . The article provides “food for thought” but I don’t “buy” the arguments used and would recommend visiting the …

This was a fantastic site visit for us. It's home to the famous Chauvet Cave, only discovered in 1994 and home to paintings dating back almost 30,000 years. It's amazing to see what proper conservation from the modern era can do (as opposed to conservation efforts on earlier-discovered caves like Lascaux or Altamira in Spain). You can't visit the original cave, naturally, but the replica cave is actually really well done. The guided tour is in French, but non-French speakers can use an audioguide instead which we were fairly happy with. The art in the cave is pretty mind-blowing, with a variety of techniques used to paint mostly predatory animals. I was reminded as well that there's a Werner Herzog documentary featuring the cave, known as "Cave of Forgotten Dreams", so I'd highly recommend checking that out if you'd like more info.

The Chauvet Pont d'Arc cave is one of the most important sites when considering its age, the story it tells and the quality of the remains it presents. Those 30.000 year-old drawings are purely striking and provide a lot of emotion. The images and evidences of the cave are as powerful and astonishing than 30 millenniums ago. The replica that has been built in order to protect the original cave has been realized using real techniques and present the real atmosphere and set up. On top of this, the interpretation centre and the fact that visits are guided allow to deeply understand that site, its importance and offer the possibility to perceive a bit the way our ancestors were living. Convenience-wise, it is better to book the visit in advance on the official website.

I visited this WHS in May 2015. The only way to be able to actually "see" something within the buffer zone of this site is to hike a 30 minute trail, next to the Pont d'Arc, to the closed entrance of the real cave of Chauvet which unlike the one in Lascaux still lacks the UNESCO WHS plaque. However, I decided to visit the replica cave after the very positive experience I had had at Lascaux. I booked months in advance and paid 13 euros for an English guided visit starting at 11:12am ... the punctuality should have already been an indication of the number of visitors (mainly French) who want to visit this WHS. Unfortunately, I thought it was just a misprint so I didn't bother. The ticket clearly indicates to be there at least 45 minutes before so I went there early enough to secure a free parking space in the enormous parking lot and be on time. The number of parked coaches/buses/vans full of Frenchmen was incredible. Many majors and politicians are promoting the replica cave as a symbol of national pride and as a great feat, so I would advise anyone wanting to visit the cave to avoid the French guided tour for this reason at least for the coming year or two. Every 7 minutes a new group is invited to visit the replica cave and a guide describes the main sights and their importance one stop after the next (one group of around 20 …