Grotte de Font-de-Gaume is one of the great treasures of prehistoric art and one of the last decorated Ice Age caves in Europe still accessible to the public. The 130-metre passage contains over 250 paintings — bison, mammoths, horses, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, and human hand stencils — executed in ochre, manganese, and charcoal by Magdalenian people around 14,000 BC. The artists used the natural contours and bumps of the rock surface to give their animals volume, an extraordinary feat of three-dimensional thinking.
The visit is conducted in small groups (a maximum of twelve people per slot) with a guide. In the dim light of the cave, shapes emerge gradually from the rock walls — a bison lowering its head, a pair of reindeer facing each other, the great frieze of polychrome bison that stretches across one wall. The experience is genuinely moving and unlike any museum. Tickets sell out weeks in advance in summer; if you arrive without a booking, turn up early at the ticket office and join the queue for any returns.
The cave is 800 metres from the centre of Les Eyzies on the road to Périgueux. There is no equivalent cave open to the public in Europe with paintings of this quality and quantity — Font-de-Gaume is irreplaceable.