Russia

Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave

WHS Score 3.48
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4.5

  • Tikhon Puliaev

The Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave comprise almost 200 red ochre wall paintings from the Late Paleolithic.

The paintings are found in several chambers of the limestone cave system. The cave is over 3km long and consists of two storeys. Geometric motifs, steppe animals such as mammoths and bison, and human beings are depicted. Shulgan-Tash Cave is also seen as a cult sanctuary and legends from the ancient Bashkorts are attached to it.

Community Perspective: this site has been unreviewed so far. Tourists can only visit the outer rooms of the cave on guided tours and there is a museum with replicas.

Site Info

Official Information
Full Name
Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave (ID: 1743)
Country
Russia
Status
Inscribed 2025 Site history
History of Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave
2025: Inscribed
Meets criterion 3
2018: Added to Tentative List
Added to tentative list
Type
Cultural
Criteria
  • iii
Links
UNESCO
whc.unesco.org
All Links
UNESCO.org

Community Information

  • Community Category
  • Archaeological site: Rock Art
Travel Information
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Connections of Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave
History
  • Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
    "A. V. Ryumin correctly determined the time of creating the drawings as the Paleolithic." (official description)
World Heritage Process
WHS on Other Lists
Timeline
  • Late Pleistocene

    "Through radiocarbon dating, cultural layers within the cave containing painted rock fragments and ochre were dated to 20,600-16,500 calibrated years BP. Carbonate deposits over the paintings corroborated their Late Palaeolithic origin" (AB ev)

Science and Technology
WHS Names
  • Untranslated Toponyms
    The name "Shulgantash" comes from the Bashkir language. "Tash" in translation - a stone, and Shulgan - a river that flows into the White near the entrance to the cave. (Russian Wikipedia)
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Community Reviews

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First published: 26/01/26.

Alexander Barabanov

Shulgan-Tash Cave

Rock Paintings of Shulgan-Tash Cave (Inscribed)

Shulgan-Tash

Visited this site in July 2025 (exactly on the day when it was inscribed). For a proper visit decided to go for the original paintings. The number of visitors to the originals is limited to 10 per months. The price is 8,600 Roubles or approximately 90 Euro. In order to book such visit for a summer weekend I started to call to the director general of Shulgan-Tash starting from February and somehow finally managed to reserve 4 people as we went in a mini-group.

The visit to cave requires 380-km driving though scenic forest landscapes and rare villages from the regional center Ufa. I read reports about awful road, but at the time of research the whole road was in very good state (probable with the view of heritage status).

There is a big brand-new museum complex in situ, access to the cave requires something like 2 kilometers of walking along the river with some information panels on the road. Site guards generously provided us boots for a small tip, and these were extremely helpful due to wet mud inside the cave (the temperature is +7 inside). 99% of visitors can only see the copies of paintings located soon after the entrance. In order to visit the originals the guide takes the key and flashlight and opens the steel gate deeper inside the cave.

The paintings were only discovered in 1959 and are located in two halls (floors). There are approximately 200 paintings which are 16,000-20,000 years old. Primitive pigment …

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