Abri Pataud is a prehistoric rock shelter in the centre of Les Eyzies village, literally beneath the houses. Where other sites in the valley require a drive or a cycle, this one is a few steps from the café. The shelter was occupied continuously for some 15,000 years — from about 35,000 to 20,000 BC — by successive populations of Cro-Magnon humans, and the excavations here in the 1950s and 60s produced stratified deposits that became a reference sequence for understanding the European Upper Paleolithic.
The guided visit takes you through the excavated shelter, past cross-sections of the archaeological layers — each stratum representing a different period of occupation. Engravings and carved limestone blocks in situ help bring the site to life. The associated research centre has produced some of the most important findings on how early modern humans lived in southwestern France. It's a useful complement to Font-de-Gaume: here you understand where and how people lived; there you see what they made.