Which Caves to visit in Dordogne

The gold standard is the Font du Gaume but you cannot get reservations this year; they were gone in January. You can arrive very very early and sit in one of 53 numbered seats and wait until 9:30 or so when the office opens in hopes of getting a ticket for that day. It is the real deal and IMHO worth doing -- but then when I did it, it was a lot easier to get a ticket as it was less well known on forums like this one.

Lascaux II is a recreation but IMHO a 'must see'; it is easy to get tickets for an English tour; the office is in Montignac and you can go get lunch or whatever before driving up to the cave site if your tour is not immediate. They run tours in different languages back to back all day running hundreds of people through a day, maybe thousands.

Roffignac is fun; you ride a tiny train deep into the mountain and see drawings made 17 K years ago; not as artistically satisfying as the others but interesting.

Peche Merle is more remote and a beautiful cave (most prehistoric drawing is done in caves that are not themselves interesting) but other than the famous spotted horses, there isn't much interesting art.

L' Abri du Cap Blanc is small. I think the tour takes 1/2 hour, at most, so it's easily combined with a visit to another site. If I were going to be in the area, again, I would visit the Musee National de Prehistoire, which was closed for renovations when we were there.

I visited Lascaux II and Rouffignac a few weeks ago and thought both were very worthwhile. At Rouffignac the scratches on the wall and the huge bowl-shaped features in the ground are from cave bears! I also enjoyed the museum of human evolution in Les Eyzies.

Also, it seems likely that Font de Gaume will be closing permanently to the public either next year or 2018.