France Guide
The Limousin, Dordogne and Lot
Grotte de Font-de-Gaume
Opening time: Daily except Sat: mid-May to mid-Sept 9.30am–5.30pm; mid-Sept to mid-May 9.30am–12.30pm & 2–5.30pm
Address: 1.5km along the D47 to Sarlat
Telephone: 05.53.06.86.00
fontdegaume@monuments-nationaux.frPrice: €6.50
Since its discovery in 1901, dozens of polychrome paintings have been found in the Grotte de Font-de-Gaume. Be aware that only 180 people are allowed to visit the cave each day and tickets sell out fast. You are advised to book (by phone or email) at least a month ahead in high season and well in advance at other times. You have to pay at the same time (€1.50 reservation fee; credit cards accepted) and tickets cannot be cancelled, though you can change the date and time if necessary. If you want to chance it, fifty tickets are sold on the spot each day; start queuing early.
The cave was first settled by Stone Age people during the last Ice Age – about 25,000 BC – when the Dordogne was the domain of roaming bison, reindeer and mammoths. The entrance is no more than a fissure concealed by rocks and trees above a small lush valley, leading to a narrow twisting passage. The first painting you see is a frieze of bison, reddish-brown in colour, massive, full of movement and very far from the primitive representations you might expect. Further on comes the most miraculous image of all, a frieze of five bison discovered in 1966 during cleaning operations. The colour, remarkably sharp and vivid, is preserved by a protective layer of calcite. Shading under the belly and down the thighs is used to give three-dimensionality with a sophistication that seems utterly modern. Another panel consists of superimposed drawings, a fairly common phenomenon in cave painting, sometimes the result of work by successive generations, but here an obviously deliberate technique. A reindeer in the foreground shares legs with a large bison behind to indicate perspective.
Stocks of artists' materials have also been found: kilos of prepared pigments; palettes – stones stained with ground-up earth pigments; and wooden painting sticks. Painting was clearly a specialized, perhaps professional, business, reproduced in dozens of caves located in the central Pyrenees and northern Spain.