The French Underground

Prehistoric cave paintings get the hi-tech treatment at the Dordogne’s stunning new visitor attraction

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There’s something pretty spine-tingling about standing close to artworks created just after the ice age: vivid, colourful images of beasts that roamed the tundra of Europe some 20,000 years ago.

The cave paintings of Lascaux were discovered in 1940 in the Dordogne department of France by four teenagers and opened to an eager public in 1948. But by 1963, the paintings were deteriorating in the damp air and the door in the hillside was banged shut for the last time.

Fast-forward half a century, however, and I’m standing in front of those same bulls and horses painted by Cro-Magnon people with brains not dissimilar to our own. But there’s no damage to these paintings and no risk of it either, because I’m in a full-size replica cave, perfect in every minute detail, which opened last December at the International Centre for Cave Art – situated at the foot of the hill where the originals were discovered.

Authenticity

I’m stunned at how realistic it is – not just the contours of the cave and those stunning paintings, but also the authentic humidity and odour of the original cave reproduced here for 21st century visitors. As I look at the great black bulls, dappled cows, magnificent brown stags and red horses, I half expect them to gallop away in a roar of dust and noise.