Vézère Valley

Visited March 2024.

Other reviewers were immensely helpful in planning my trip and I shan't repeat their excellent advice, but I felt a 2024 update may be in order as certain things -- most notably the fact that entirely online pre-booking is now available at all the sites! -- seem to have changed very recently.

That's right, no more queueing at 6am required, at least for the sites that were open when I visited in March (the last month of the 'off-season'). For the sites within Les Eyzies that don't have a welcome hut, you must go to the one at Font-de-Gaume to have your ticket checked, but this is the only necessary remnant of the old system from what I can tell.

This does -- however -- seem to be something not many have cottoned onto. I was able to book onto my desired times at the most popular sites just days in advance of my trip. Most other people I met on the trip had apparently queued. I credit finding this out with the fact I was able to visit three inscribed sites and both museums in a daytrip from Bordeaux.

I always challenge myself to visit sites without the use of any private vehicle and without having to overnight if I can avoid it. I was living in Bordeaux at the time and did this as a daytrip. The train journey is long but comfortable and you must change trains at either Périgueux …

I was back in the Bordeaux area to visit the Cordouan Lighthouse and decided to swing by the Vezere Valley for the third time. The first time was for Lascoux in 2004 and the second time was for Font-de-Gaume in 2009. My initial motivation to go back was to visit the National Museum of Prehistory, as it was closed on the day I visited Font-de-Gaume in 2009.
 
But then, by staying overnight in Les Eyzies, I managed to visit three more components of this august WHS: Abri de Cro-Magnon, Les Combarelles, and La Madeleine. 

Arriving in Les Eyzies by train in the early afternoon, I first visited Abri de Cro-Magnon, which supposedly opened to the public only in 2014. It is a very easy visit, as it is located right by the train station. Indeed, the prehistoric bones were discovered when they dug the area to clear for the train station in 1868. Although the main thing here is just Abri (shelter) created by the overhanging rocks of a cliff (See Aspasia's photo below), it's got to be very important as it is where Cro-Magnon Man, human ancestor, was first identified. 

Then I walked over to the museum, but more about this later. 

In mid-afternoon, I had a pre-booked, time-allocated, 8-Euro entrance ticket for Abri de Cap Blanc, but after realizing that I had packed too many activities within the 24 hour period of stay in Les Eyzies, I decided to forgo it. Well, there is always …

I've wanted to visit this area for a long time, so I was thrilled to finally fit it into a trip. We visited three main sites: Font-de-Gaume, Combarelles, and Lascaux (IV) in October 2022.

First, to update some logistics: No more lining up at dawn to get tickets for Font-de-Gaume or Combarelles. They sell time-reserved tickets online now, and it is essential you get them ahead of time. Even in the off/shoulder season of late October, they do sell out and I didn't always get my ideal time slot booking about a week ahead. You can also reserve tickets for Lascaux IV, but in late October, we just showed up and were able to join the next (non-guided) group. It would have been about a 45 minute wait for the next English guided tour, but we were fine with the audioguides. We also stopped by Abri de Cap Blanc, and would have been allowed to join the next tour, but we didn't have time to wait, and unfortunately, you can't see anything at all without paying the admission.

We visited Font-de-Gaume first, and it's wonderful to see the painted figures there. There were some scientists studying certain sections while we were there. It was a bit frustrating being told, "Oh there are some good ones at the end there, but we don't allow the public there any more." But overall, our guide was very good at explaining what we were looking at.

At Grotte des Combarelles, there's …

This is not a review about what you see, but about how to do it without a car. Since I don't drive, I knew from the beginning that I would need to hitchhike. This was August 2020 and although not all the sites were open or they were already fully booked (as was Cap Blanc when I called, several days before going), I assumed that fully booked meant tourists, hence people I should be able to convince to take me, in spite of the mask. I based myself in Bordeaux and the initial idea was easy: take morning train to Les Eyzies via Périgueux, visit the museum + Cro-Magnon, reach Rouffignac and Lascaux (I had booked a few days before a tour in French for Lascaux II at 5 pm), then evening train Sarlat to Bordeaux. 

However, I only managed to get 4 hours of sleep the night before (I was coming from Lyon) and wasted time packing in the morning, so when I checked the timetable board at St Jean, I saw my train had left 3 minutes before. I was so drowsy that I couldn't even panic. Luckily, the next train to Périgueux was coming soon and I used the same ticket. From there, the first stop was at the tourist office, who told me I couldn't make it ('watch me'), then to the cathedral (which is a WHS as parts of Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France) and lastly I crossed Pont Saint-Georges and started …

The Vézère Valley was my last WHS ‘to do’ in mainland France. In preparation, I found it difficult to get a good overview of the Vézère locations, especially for a visit out of season. So I made a spreadsheet to come to terms with the different access policies. It turns out that 2 out of the 15 locations are permanently closed to visitors, 6 aren’t open during winter months and the others … well, lots of oddities there as well. A general warning: always check the opening hours on the French section of the respective official website, as they may not always update the English version.

I started my visit with a pilgrimage to Lascaux I – the original Lascaux cave. It has been closed off to visitors since 1963, but on Google Streetview, I noticed that a paved road runs along its entrance. I left my car at the entrance to Lascaux II and went on further exploration on foot. The whole area was eerily quiet and there are a lot of No Entry signs, but accessing this road seems to be OK. What you’ll find in the end is only a fence and a gate of course, but it has a UNESCO sign!

I continued with attending the last tour of the day at Lascaux IV, the 2016 replica. The tour is already well-described in earlier reviews; I found it disappointing. Especially the audiovisual experience at the end is awkward. With a 20 EUR entrance fee, …

If you are spending time in the department of Dordogne, it is possible with the right planning to see 3-to-5 locations of this WH site in one day. 

My day in May of 2018 started with a wash. Grotte de Font de Gaume is among the most popular of the caves. You cannot buy tickets in advance, and only 50 people are allowed in during the course of the day. The caves open doors at 9:30am, and you realistically need to be there no later than 8:30 in order to get a ticket for some later time in the day. We arrived around 9:05 and were approximately at #70 in line, and left at 9:30 after hearing from the ticket clerk that our chances for the day were slim. I knew in advance that there was a fair possibility of that happening, but getting up much earlier to spend an hour or more in line for tickets is rarely an acceptable strategy for yours truly; I was hoping that in the shoulder season there may be less competition for tickets, but was proven wrong.

Instead, we went to Abri de Cap Blanc, where there was no line for the opening at 10am, and only a dozen of other visitors joined us in the following hour. This is not a cave, but a preserved rock overhang (abri means "shelter" in French), where the art form is not painting but sculptural relief. The sculptures were magnificent beyond any of …

When I heard that France would have opened the new Lascaux International Center known as Lascaux IV, I immediately wanted to visit this new museum which seemed to be a great place to see. The tickets are easy to secure by online booking from the Lascaux’s website (which could be improved a lot) even if not all guided tours are on display, but since my visit happened last week (September), there were plenty of free slot of tour to choose. They cost 16€, a remarkable price I should say. The village of Montignac is easy to reach only by car though.

As other people said, the museum complex building is modern and well integrated with the nearby landscape. Professional guides accompany groups of max 32 persons (commencing every six minutes) from the site’s welcome desk to the exit of the reproduction of the cave. After being guided to the roof in the open air to explain the environment of Vezere River Valley, listening to a dog barking sound and voice of chasing boys to replicate the time when they discovered Lascaux in a small open corridor next to the forest, seeing a presentation of what this area looked like in ancient time, we finally entered a kind of replica of Lascaux Cave. Inside the replica, the atmosphere is like a real cave. It is cool and dark. They say this space is dedicated to “contemplation”, so, even if you are staring at replicas you are not allowed to take any …

When I heard the news that France has opened the new Lascaux International Center or commonly known as Lascaux IV, I immediately asked my friends to visit this new museum as part of our trip to Andorra which seemed to be a great place to see. The tickets were very easy to secure by online booking from the Lascaux’s website and maybe our visit happened in March, there were plenty of free slot of tour to choose. We arrived the village of Montignac 50 minutes before our tour started, but because of many detours from road construction in the center of village and our GPS did not know this new site, we got lost and arrived at museum carpark 10 minutes before the tour started.

The stunning museum complex building is very modern but well integrated with overall nearby landscape. We met our guide who is excellent in French accent English. Our tour group was only 10 persons. The museum also provides an excellent hi-tech audio guide with personal ipad liked machine. First of all, our guide took us to the roof of the complex to explain the environment of Vezere River Valley, then we went to see a presentation of what this area was looked like in ancient time in each season especially the common wild animal and the story of how Lascaux has been rediscovered by local teens. Our guide took us to the small open corridor next to the forest while played the record of dog …

This is a site I had long wanted to visit, but it is rather difficult without your own transport. The solution was a well-organized day trip run by a tour company (Ophorus). Starting from the pretty medieval town of Sarlat, we first visited the cave of Rouffignac, which is especially famous for its fantastic paintings of mammoths. The visit is by means of an electric railway which stops at several points for an explanation of the paintings. It was already a tourist attraction in the 19th century, so it is remarkable that one can still visit the original cave, rather than a replica. The day continued with a guided visit of the excellent National Prehistory Museum in Les Eyzies de Tayac, which supposedly contains the largest collection of prehistoric artifacts in the world. In the afternoon, we joined a guided tour of the Lascaux II cave, the replica of the most famous cave in the world. The original was closed to visitors in 1963, and the replica opened in 1983, just about 200 metres above the original (the entrance to the original is of course closed off, but the UNESCO sign can be seen at the fence). Lascaux II recreates the most important parts of the original cave in immaculate detail and is really quite fascinating, although I have to say that I was even more impressed by the original cave in Rouffignac.

I visited this great WHS in March 2014. I drove to the Vézère Valley early in the morning. There are prehistoric sites scattered all over the valley but most are either not open to the general public or else it is only possible to visit with a tour guide available only 2-4 times a day (especially in the low season, i.e. NOT June to August). After a lot of research over the internet, I decided to head first to Les-Eyzies-de-Tyack to visit the National Museum of Prehistory. This gave me a general overview and good insights on what to look out for and why these sites are so unique and important. Afterwards, I proceeded to Roc de Cazelle which turned out to be nothing more than caves with artificial scenes attempting to depict how prehistoric everyday life must have been in these caves. All in all it's not worth the effort and time to get there unless you travel with children. Next I visited Font-de-Gaume Decorated Cave which I had prebooked directly by email to fontdegaume@monuments-nationaux.fr. There is quite a hike to visit these caves which are high in the cliffs so my trekking shoes came in handy. The guided visit was 1 hour long. This cave contains around 180 paintings of animals, mainly bison and reindeer with different shades of black, red, brown and yellow. Since the cave has never been completely closed, the quality of the drawings is fading, even though only 200 visitors per day are allowed. …

To visit this site I travelled by train to Les Eyzies de Tyack where I visited an informative Pre-history museum. But earlier in the day I had located the Font de Gaume, a series of caves high on a cliff. I managed to get on the first tour of the day when during an hour long tour the guide showed us spectacular paintings of many different animals, but mostly bison and reindeer.

I had wanted to reach the Lascaux caves, but there is an absence of transport in that part of the valley.

In our trip to France we have visited four prehistoric sites but I was very disappointed by the fact that most of them were accessible only on booking or were closed. The valley, long 40 km and large 30 km, contain 147 sites and 25 decorated caves (15 are WHS). First we have been to the shelter of Cap Blanc, located in the lateral Beune valley, near Marquay. There are high-relieves of two bisons, horses and reindeer in a limestone cliff, also longer than 2 m, made by reindeer hunters more than 15000 years ago, and a human burial place. The cave of Rouffignac (or Cro-de-Granville), that was already known and described in the 16th century, is situated on a lateral valley along a tributary of the Vézère and has over 8 km of galleries. There were discovered in 1956 engravings and black-outlined paintings, especially in the Breuil gallery: 160 mammoths, 11 bisons, 11 goats, 9 horses, 7 rhinoceros, 1 bear and many other pictures. We have also seen, near Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac the deposit of Laugerie Basse, in a place called 'Les Marseilles', where were found many implements from the reindeer age and a cross-section shows stratified tiers of excavated human remains, and the Grand Roc, a cave with 40 km of passages leading to small chambers that contain stalactites and stalagmites.

The cave of Rouffignac and the shelter of Cap Blanc are two of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, because of the beauty and antiquity of the …