Visiting Caves in the Dordogne

The Font du Gaume is the real deal. The methods for getting the few available tickets vary from time to time, but find out what they are now and book as soon as you can. The recreation at Lascaux are also a must -- They look precisely as the pictures looked originally and were recreated with original techniques and pigments.

there are few tours to the Font du Gaume in English and each group is only about 10. If you can only get a French tour take it and read up. It is the seeing not the talking. Peche Merle also has some original paintings including the famous spotted horses, but in my opinion is not very interesting beyond that compared to the others. It is a beautiful cave geologically but the art is less interesting than Font du Gaume. Roffignac is fun; you take a train undergrounds to see drawings. They are drawings not polychrome paintings but there are interesting portrayals of mastadons -- and they have the best sourvenir t-shirts FWIW.

If for some reason you're unable to reserve a visit to a cave, be aware that the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux has an exhibit with a video produced by a drone flight through several different caves with a variety of different cave art styles. I found my desire to see "actual cave art" was satisfied by this exhibit; others might not have the same reaction, but regardless it's great.

We’ve visited both caves with original drawings and reproductions. I learned something in each, but I learned the most about how the prehistoric artists created their works at Lascaux. I wouldn’t skip a reproduction.
Rouffignac is fascinating not only for its extensive drawings but also for its history of bear habitat.

We found a 1-1/2 hour visit to the Musee de la Pre-histoire in Les Eyzies enhanced our appreciation of the lives and times of Cro-Magnon people. https://musee-prehistoire-eyzies.fr/. There were many artifacts - bone tools and skeletons of extinct animals - that told how the people hunted, fished and lived. Lovely, modest sized museum. Les Eyzies is the town a mile or two from Font du Gaume.

We biked right past Le Roque St Christophe, on the road between Les Eyzies and Montignac (the town near Lascaux), but failed to stop at that Troglodyte dwelling site. Since you will have a car, you might want to see if that is a good site to include on your trip along the Vezere.

I really liked 2 things about Pech Merle! The fossilized human foot print really affected me. Somehow that really connected with me even more than the negative outlines of hand prints. The other thing is that I live in the area where the Nez Perce bred/breed the Appaloosa Horse so to see the "leopard spotting" on horses depicted 25,000 years ago kind of blew me away. I thought it was very interesting.

Other than the Lascaux Centre and Rouffignac, please be aware that the caves require prior ticketing. Tickets usually sell out at FDG within days of release. Release is published to be at 45 days, but, for example, September tickets were released earlier. Very similar to most popular European venues. The website for Les Eyzies caves are on the French Monuments sites, other caves can be “Googled”. “The Rough Guide to the Dordogne & Lot “ and Paul Bahn’s “Cave Art “ are good resources.

We went to Font de Gaume, Peche Merle and Rouffignac. I loved them all. Peche Merle was my favorite; the handprints blew me away. It’s a bit of a drive from Domme, but worth it. It gives you a chance to see another river valley. We stopped at a couple of towns in the area and they had a different feel than the towns in the Dordogne Valley. With more time, I probably would have gone to Lascaux, but I was most interested in seeing the actual drawings.

Here's my Trip Report from our visit last October. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/trip-report-part-2-hills-and-castles-dordogne

It's lengthy, so if you don't want to read it all, day 5 of the report is when we visited Font de Gaume. As others have mentioned, tickets are limited and when they go on sale seems to change often. I started checking every day about this time last year and finally got tickets mid-Sept; if I remember correctly.

On a previous visit in 2019 we visited Rouffignac and Lascaux. Both are also excellent. I wouldn't discount Lascaux just because it's a reproduction. It also has an excellent gallery that adds to the visit. I hope you enjoy the Dordogne as much as we did. It was one of my favourite vacations ever.

June 13, 14, 15, 2025 we visited Pech Merle, Lascaux IV and the Les Ezyies prehistory museum, and Font Le Gaume. Our experiences: Pech Merle was easy to visit. Getting there did not require a long walk. The actual cave is very accessible - smooth walkways, even stairways with railings, good lighting. One man in our group had a cane and was allowed to take it into the cave. The paintings are all protected by a fine mesh, but they are easily visible. The cave itself has beautiful limestone formations. Good adjacent cafe. This cave is a 75 minute drive from Sarlat, but it makes a good day trip combined with Saint Cirq la Popie.

Lascaux IV is a reproduction but is a very accurate representation of 95% of the cave. The original, no longer accessible to anyone without extensive credentials, is considered the "crown jewel" of the so-far discovered caves. Audio guide is available in most languages. The attached museum gives lots of detail about the cave art. It is definitely worth visiting!

The Les Ezyies prehistory museum is a very interesting building with a terrace that has excellent views. The displays are mostly animal skeletons and geologic - not much about the cave art. Parking is a PITA.

Font de Gaume - we had no trouble getting tickets a few weeks before our trip. Access to the cave is about a thousand foot steady uphill 20 minute walk. Lighting is very minimal - just the guide tracing the paintings with a flashlight. Only a very small portion of the cave is included in the tour. Lots of very low ceilings and some tight squeezes that would be difficult for anyone of larger dimensions.

We researched ahead of time and then did French tours of the two caves - for some reason English tours tend to be in the middle of the day which makes it difficult to do anything else that day.

Just our recent experiences - hope it is helpful

In 2006 we went to the Dordogne to see some of the medieval villages of France. We went to one of the original caves that was discovered in the mid 1960s. It closed soon after our visit because the exhaled C02 was degrading the etchings. I didn’t see a thing because after climbing down the stairs, I saw a narrow opening that you had to crouch to get through. I flew by my husband and friends at breakneck speed to get out of there. My claustrophobia kicked into high gear. They thought I must have really had to use the bathroom. The only other time that has happened was visiting one of the pyramids at Giza in 1980.