What to see in the Pech Merle cave: the 14 stops on the tour

The tour in order

1. The entrance staircase, dug in 1923 near the prehistoric entrance.
2. The Combel Gallery, discovered in 1949: bear wallows in clay, bear and hyena bones, and the site’s oldest paintings—dots, horses, a feline, and deer.
3. The Black Frieze, seven metres of wall: a horse at the centre, four bison, eleven mammoths, four aurochs, drawn with manganese and iron oxide.
4. The Cornice: bison and mammoths in black outline, including one that uses the rock’s natural relief for its back.
5. The Painted Chamber.
6. The Hieroglyph Ceiling: finger tracings in the clay, mammoths, female figures, circles.
7. The Disk Chamber, natural calcite disks.
8. Footprints: around a dozen footprints from an adolescent, preserved in both directions in the ancient clay.
9. The Bear Gallery, ancient columns, around fifty metres underground.
10. The Bear Passage, with an engraved bear’s head.
11. The Wounded Man, a red figure pierced by lines.
12. The cave’s gems and the “spinning top”, a unique formation.
13. The bison-women: red deer head, negative handprint surrounded by thirteen dots, female figures, mammoths.
14. The Spotted Horses: two horses back-to-back, six black hand stencils, fish, and symbols.

What makes Pech Merle unique

First, it’s the original. At Lascaux and Chauvet, you visit a replica. Here, the manganese layer on the black frieze is the very one a hand applied millennia ago, just metres away from you. I go into more detail in Pech Merle or Lascaux.

Next, the inventory: around 700 motifs, including 70 animals (26 mammoths, 13 bison, 7 aurochs, 9 horses, 4 deer including a megaloceros, 2 ibex, 2 fish, 1 feline, 1 bear, 5 composite animals), 28 human figures and hands, and some 550 dots. The dates range from 29,000 to 16,000 years ago, meaning the cave was visited and painted over more than ten thousand years by people who never knew each other.

Then the traces that are not paintings: the footprints of the adolescent, the bear wallows, the engraved bear’s head. A visitor wrote last July: walking exactly where they walked 29,000 years ago. I couldn’t have said it better.

Finally, the geology. Calcite discs, cave pearls, the spinning top: in July, Stéphanie recommended the visit to geology enthusiasts even before mentioning the paintings. Few decorated caves offer such high-quality formations. See the most beautiful caves in France for comparison.

The spotted horses

This is the last station, and the guide often remains silent for a few seconds. Two horses back to back, their bodies covered in black dots, surrounded by six negative handprints and fish. The head of the right-hand horse fits into a rock protrusion that already resembles a head. Radiocarbon-dated to around 29,000 years ago. Is this “the most beautiful cave painting”? I’m asked the question, and I reply that I haven’t seen Chauvet in person, that no one has seen it since it closed, and that among those you can see in the original in France, this is the one I come back to see.

Frequently asked questions