Chauvet Cave Replica in Southern France

The actual Chauvet Cave (which is nearby) is sealed and closed to the public to preserve the cave art (animal paintings and drawings) from 36,000 years ago. The replica is an exact duplicate (according to the French President) and was completed two years ago.

We visited this site last fall and it was simply fabulous; well worth the effort. However there is pretty much no way to get there except with a rental car and it is a tortuous drive along the Arc -- and very beautiful. If you can only rent a car for a few days to do this, it is worth doing. Hope you can do that or find a ride. It is quite wonderful.

Agree with Janet, as usual, that you need a car. It's several hours from Avignon and even further from Montélimar to the "caverne". Thé Ardèche is a lot of tiny roads back to Vallons Pont d'Arc. It took us some thinking but we finally figured out that the "grotte" is thé original sealed and hidden cave, while the ,"caverne" is the excellent replica.

In the area we also enjoyed the lavender museum and the Aven d'Ornac.

Thanks Janet and Bets. Sounds like renting a car may be the best option to get to the "caverne" in October since public transportation is limited after September 30. We were hoping for an easy ride to enjoy the view. Now it looks like slow mountain driving....

Yes, but it's worth it. And see the actual Arc Janet mentioned. The scenery along the river is spectacular.

Hi there - we are in Lyon in March (2018) and are aiming to go to Caverne du pont d'arc, and are not able to find very up-to-date information online, so hoping someone here might be able to help. The site itself (http://www.cavernedupontdarc.fr/) says "booking highly recommended" and includes a link to book your tickets online, but when we click the link to actually purchase tickets, it brings us to a calendar to select dates and the only date in all of 2018 that is shown as available is one day in February with 28 slots available - and it's showing literally not a single ounce of availability until another date in 2020. Is it that the website is out of whack or that we should have purchased tickets years ago?

Next question is logistics: the site on this particular page (http://en.cavernedupontdarc.fr/plan-your-visit/access-getting-to-the-cavern/) is saying BY TRAIN, Travel to Valence TGV or Montélimar train stations, then take Rhône Alpes coach line 76 to Vallon Pont-d’Arc(+ download the coach line schedule). However, the link to the coach line schedule is the Winter 2015 schedule, and so we have seen here and a couple other forums tourists saying things that allude to that the shuttle only runs in July & August. Is "the shuttle" the same as the coach line 76? And we aren't able to find a current schedule for the coach line 76. WE aren't even clear on if it's even possible to get to the Caverne after taking a train all the way from Lyon to the Montelimar train station or if truly the only way to get there is by renting a car? Any help would be welcome! TIA!

Can't help except to say I would be surprised if tickets are not available and to note that we had a very difficult time with the web site which seemed to be down a lot. I blew my original tickets in September when I broke my elbow and ended up in a hospital in Menton for surgery. That pushed our visit back a week and the hotel we booked arranged our tickets for us. So you might pick a local hotel and then see if they can book tickets for you. they charged them directly to our credit card, but they made the arrangements. The place is really hard to get to and they run tours back to back (there is more than one group at a time in the space); hard to believe it is sold out.

We loved it and bought a set of six photo placemats in the gift shop with pictures of the cave art on them; we just enjoyed dinner on them again this evening.

While I don't know that it is true for the place you want to visit, I have noticed (as we plan our September trip) that many places / hotels in France list September dates as "nothing available" when the reality is that they simply have not yet opened those dates for taking reservations.

Ah, that's much better news Cynthia!

I will even just give them a call before we leave the states, but with the time difference I keep forgetting to call early enough.

To Beth Moser:
We were planning to visit the Chauvet Cave Replica last year, but canceled due to a knee injury. Since we did not do it, we do not have the exact information, but here is what we were planning. Check-out of our hotel in Marseille in the morning, take a train to Montelimar, catch the #76 bus (it might be a train) to Vallon Pont-d'Arc, take a short taxi ride to the Caverne entrance, spend 3 hours for the tour, exhibits, & restaurant, reverse direction via taxi back to Vallon Pont-d'Arc, then the #76 back to Montelimar, and finally a train to Lyon, and checking into our hotel in Lyon around 8pm. The #76 has four runs in each direction each day. It is not the free shuttle which runs July and August between Vallon and the Caverne which will save the taxi fare. We do not think the Chauvet Cave Replica is sold out to 2020. It is not open for reservations until about six months before the visit date. Then there are 28 tickets for each starting time-slot. However, it could be sold out two months before your planned visit date. I think that covers what we can remember... Vic

Vic - thank you so much! That is super helpful. Yes, we had about the same plan - Lyon by train to Montelimar, grab the 76 and then that's where we were confused about whether we could grab a taxi or needed the shuttle from there to the Caverne. Thank you so much for the helpful info!

I will look back at the Caverne site and/or give them a ring re: ticket reservations.

I have also seen issues with the website. We're travelling close to 6 months from now and there are no tickets for any of the dates between now and 6 months from now.

I guess I'll have to call them tomorrow.