lascaux virtual tour

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The Cave Art of Lascaux: a Virtual Reality Experience

This exhibition has now finished.

Step back in time 21,000 years and visit the incredible Stone Age cave art of Lascaux in immersive 3D.

Experience this interactive exhibition wearing a Virtual Reality headset. Find out more about what a Virtual Reality experience involves .

This world heritage site in the Dordogne, France, was discovered in 1940 by two teenagers. It features etched and painted images large and small, of many animals. These include bison, horses, ibex, large cats and even a rhinoceros. There are also mysterious symbols and abstract elements.

International teams of experts have spent decades researching and analysing the images, working out how they were made and what they might mean.

The site itself has been closed to the public since 1963, but there is a full size replica of the cave complex in France. Now, using the latest technology, you can ‘visit’ the caves on your own doorstep.

Explore the drawings in detail and learn how they were found, preserved and recreated. Discover ‘invisible’ engravings and hear from experts about the original purpose of the site.

The exhibition also features displays on Cro-Magnon (early European modern human) life and culture. There are replicas of objects found on the cave floor, and stunning lifesize sculptures of a Cro-Magnon family.

Accessibility

• The VR experience currently involves standing for 15 minutes, moving about the space, turning around and interacting with virtual elements. You need to reach out your hands and follow spoken instructions from a voiceover. If you do not think this will be possible for you then please contact us before booking and we will see what adjustments we can provide.
• The experience is accessible for wheelchair users and other disabled visitors, but please contact us before booking if you have any questions about accessibility.
• VR is not recommended for those with epilepsy.
• The experience may be confusing for people living with dementia.
• Available in English, German and Italian.

Please note:

• Children under 12 must be accompanied at all times by an adult who will also need a ticket.
• We recommend that the Virtual Reality experience is more suitable for children aged 10+.
• Children aged 7+ can do the Virtual Reality experience, but may need additional support from an adult. If you are supporting a child through this experience and wish to use the VR headset then we recommend booking yourself into the slot immediately before or after the child to enable this.
• Younger children can go into the exhibition, but for safety cannot use the VR headsets because of their size and spatial processing ability. Please be aware that if you are visiting with children under the age of 7 and you are using the VR experience then an additional adult will need to be present to accompany any under 7s. If both adults wish to use the VR headsets then we recommend taking this in turns and booking one adult into the slot immediately before or after the other.
• People with an allergy or skin sensitivity to silicone or to medical grade alcohol should not use the VR

This exhibition was created by The Departmental Council of Dordogne, with support provided by the Regional Council of New Aquitaine, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and the European Union. The worldwide tour is organised by the SPL Lascaux, international exhibition.

The Cave Art of Lascaux: a Virtual Reality Experience

Step back in time 21 , 000  years and vis­it the incred­i­ble Stone Age cave art of Las­caux in immer­sive  3 D .

Bris­tol Muse­um &  Art Gallery

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Home Share Our must-haves The Lascaux cave

The Lascaux cave

Discover and visit the Lascaux cave

Lascaux, the Sistine chapel of Périgord

The most famous cave in Périgord is renowned for its multiple prehistoric representations. It is not uncommon to find a cave with paintings or sculptures dating from Prehistory in Europe, but Lascaux has a variety and countless elements that make it a must for your stay in the Dordogne.

 The original decorated cave is closed to the public since 1963 in order to preserve his exceptionally rare works. However, the International Center for Cave Art Lascaux IV offers a faithful reproduction. There bull room will impress young and old, open your eyes wide, you will find a prehistoric sign, a painting, an engraving... No less than 357 horses will be presented to you and even 1 human representation! Extremely rare representation in prehistoric art. 

Lascaux, unique in Dordogne and in France!

The Lascaux cave is unique In France ! There are certainly many other caves in the country, but none have such sumptuous representations of prehistoric art. In addition, the Montignac-Lascaux cave is the cave which concentrates the most reproductions, it is equivalent to 2 Chauvet and 4 Cosquer! Don't miss this national monument which makes the Dordogne famous throughout the world.

There are numerous prehistoric caves in the Vézère valley.

Of the 400 decorated caves discovered in Europe, 40 are recorded in Dordogne! A stone's throw from the Lascaux cave: prehistoric sites, prehistoric caves with paintings, prehistoric caves with engravings, prehistoric shelters with bas-reliefs, the National Museum of Prehistory, the Prehistory Interpretation Center... The Vézère valley is an open-air scene for those who want to discover the prehistoric period.

Prehistory in the Vézère Valley

Prehistory animation in Dordogne

The International Center for Cave Art Lascaux IV brings together on its walls an impressive collection of prehistoric works. Some of the signs present or its engravings are also found in the caves of Combarelles or Bara-Bahau, but one such concentration is exceptional .

Lascaux IV is the entire original cave

Le facsimile intended to faithfully represent the walls and contours of the prehistoric cave. For this, the Montignac-Lascaux workshops carried out precision work. The hall of the bulls, the axial diverticulum, the nave or the apse could be recreated life-size to make you feel the emotion of discovery  ! The well, inaccessible in its initial configuration, was reproduced in the Lascaux Workshop to be able to admire the only human representation discovered to date in the Lascaux cave. 

Lascaux, an architectural gem

The International Center for Cave Art Lascaux IV is an almost imperceptible building as it is integrated into the hill. The architectural firm has strived not to distort this hill, classified as a Historic Monument since 1940, then listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1970s.

When we visit Lascaux IV we admire the village of Montignac-Lascaux . Indeed, the visit begins with the panoramic terrace to contemplate the view of the village and explain the formation of the Vézère valley and the geology of the place. Visiting a cave is above all venture underground, you will realize this throughout the visit from the ambient darkness linked to the underground aspect of the building. However, light also has its place in this place, it bursts out spectacularly between the reproduction of the cave and the workshop in this part called the fault!

Diverse visits

The International Center for Cave Art is a reproduction of the Lascaux cave, but not only that! In this building various tours are offered to the public. 

Want an exceptional evening? There Cave Art and Gastronomy evening is made for you. After a unique visit to the cavity, a menu prepared by a star chef is served accompanied by stories et anecdotes on the life of the man from Lascaux.

You are in in family  ? Prioritize the narrated visit. With an explorer, children will explore the cave in a fun way. A “visiting companion” is provided during this unforgettable experience in the heart of Prehistory.

If you want a traditional visit, know that the discovery of the International Center for Cave Art Lascaux IV is free for children under 5 years old and that combined tickets with other family sites are possible. 

Do you prefer a private visit  from Lascaux? Book Lascaux II for your company or group of friends. For an attractive price, you can relive the discovery in the style of Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agniel or Simon Coencas.

For easy access to the visit of Lascaux

Lascaux is like the Eiffel Tower, it’s unmissable during a stay in France! This is why it is better to prepare for your visit.

Here are some tips for you: 

La online booking, you know ? It is primordial if you are planning a stay in the Dordogne in the summer season. The opening hours are wide but visiting slots fill up quickly in summer. Book as soon as possible on lascaux.fr

Are you early? That's good ! The International Center for Cave Art keeps a few tickets on sale every morning in summer when the counters open. Please note, the slots are established in advance, you will not be able to actually choose your visiting time but if you are just passing through, you can try your luck.

Are you more of an evening person? Even better ! The slots of Evening visits are often less complete. We know that you want to have a little Monbazillac on the terrace for an aperitif, but choosing an evening visit means choosing a more intimate visit. 

No more visits for Lascaux IV? The Lascaux II cave is still open to the public, it still welcomes nearly 70 visitors per year. This facsimile opened in 000 already offers 1983% of the original cave, not bad for an introduction to the world of cave art.

And then, as we told you above, there is no shortage of caves in the Dordogne?

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Lascaux Cave

Virtual Experience April 20, 2022

Table of contents

Returning to the cave, virtually

First-of-a-kind vr technology, a bounty for researchers.

Wearing virtual-reality goggles in near-darkness, they look up, reach out, marvel, then drop to their hands and knees and crawl.

“I’m trying to move in a cavity that’s really narrow,” exclaims one man on all fours, despite the fact that he is on the carpeted floor of a 150 square meter (1,600 square foot) room with tall ceilings. “It’s very small. It’s very cramped!”

“There is almost a sensory experience, although we’re in a space with no sensations,” a woman observes.

“We still have this information in our brain that tells us, ‘Watch out; there’s a wall,’” a second man says. “But, as the experience goes on, you get used to it; you don’t question it anymore, and you admire it all.”

“It” is a life-sized virtual reality (VR) experience of Lascaux Cave, a Paleolithic treasure near Montignac, France, that has been closed to the public since 1963. Following the cave’s discovery in 1940, more than 15 years of daily foot traffic and exposure to human respiration, electric lights and outside air threatened to destroy its 1,900 paintings and etchings, created 18,000 to 20,000 years ago and collectively described as “the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric times.”

For its own protection, officials of La Direction régionale des affaires culturelle Nouvelle-Aquitaine (the New Aquitaine Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs), part of the French Ministère de la Culture (Ministry of Culture), keep the 235-meter (770-foot) cave network closed to the public. The prohibitions are almost absolute, limiting even preservationists and researchers to a total of 200 hours per year in the cave, for brief visits of no more than two people at a time.

Restricting access helped to save the cave paintings, but limited in-person research and real-time collaboration among larger groups of scientists and researchers. Now, however, a virtual reality tour of Lascaux Cave offers a new way to experience all of Lascaux’s twists, turns and cramped spaces as if you were there, without any risk to the cave or its visitors.

In the decades since the cave closed, experts with the French government developed a series of strategies for exposing the world to Lascaux’s treasures – without exposing those treasures to the world.

Lascaux II opened in 1982. This physical reconstruction of the cave is located on the hill of Lascaux, only a few hundred meters from the cave itself. In 2012, sections of the cave not reproduced in Lascaux II were presented to the public in facsimiles; the global tour of that exhibition is known as Lascaux III. Since December 2016, a nearly complete facsimile of the cave, plus various multimedia tools about Lascaux, have been available in the Centre International de l’Art Parietal, known as Lascaux IV.

In 2013, at about the same time that Lascaux III began its tour, the cave was digitally scanned in 3D. Recently, officials shared the scans with Dassault Systèmes, which develops 3D computer software for use in business and industry and has applied its technology to many archaeological and cultural heritage projects. These include 3D “virtual twins” – scientifically accurate computer simulations – of the Great Pyramid of Khufu; the complete Giza plain; Paris from the Iron Age to the 19 th century; and a 3D virtualization of how Allied forces constructed a temporary port for disembarking troops and supplies following the Normandy invasion in World War II.

“We have always used cultural projects to see how we can manage innovation, and to get our engineers to ask new questions,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, Dassault Systèmes’ vice president of innovation. “Talking to new people – archaeologists, historians, artists – and creating fresh experiences is a fruitful way to drive innovation and unconventional collaborations that raise new kinds of questions.”

Click through this photo gallery for a glimpse into the Virtual Reality Lascaux Cave experience:

Converting the 3D scans of Lascaux Cave into an immersive experience was an opportunity for Dassault Systèmes to help Ministére de la culture “reopen” it to the public, but also to test and refine a prototype VR software kit the company had developed. The kit allows non-expert users to create their own 3D VR simulations from simple building blocks. Importantly for the Lascaux Cave experience, the kit uses avatars to represent multiple users, allowing each person in a group to know where their colleagues are while immersed. This awareness allows visitors to the virtual cave to move freely without bumping into one another or the walls, despite goggles that prevent them from seeing their real-life surroundings.

The experience, currently housed in a room at the Cite de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (City of Architecture and Heritage) near the Eiffel Tower, employs an OptiTrack camera system to monitor each participant’s position in relation to their peers. Inside their VR goggles, each participant sees not only the cave, but avatars of the other six people in each group, plus a guide.

In developing the experience, Tayoubi’s team discovered that the technology works best when operated by a guide, who can answer questions in real time and highlight specific images just by pointing a finger at them. To see distant images in more detail, the guide touches a control panel to “lift” a group toward a ceiling or move them closer to a wall.

Because the experience is virtual, guides can safely take their tour groups to areas of the cave in virtual reality that have never been accessible to the public – even when the cave itself was open to visitors.

“We have two sections that have not been seen (by the public) before,” said Muriel Mauriac, the cave’s lead conservator with DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine. “No one could access them because you needed to find your way through very narrow passages.”

For researchers, the VR experience is – in some ways – better than the real thing.

“Indeed, when you go into the cave you can’t take the time that you take here,” Mauriac said. “You can come as close as possible to the engravings. In the cave we are sometimes 5-6 meters (16-20 feet) away from a vault; here you can really be in direct contact with the walls and with the works and see some incredible details of workmanship.”

“It enables multiple visits to the cave, and you can have 3, 4, 5 colleagues – even more – which you can’t do in the real cave.” Jean-Christophe Portais, heritage engineer, DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Because the VR experience also allows multiple people to interact while immersed, it enhances collaboration for researchers and conservators.

“It’s amazing,” said Jean-Christophe Portais, DRAC’s heritage engineer for Conservation régionale des monuments historiques (regional conservation of historical monuments). “It enables multiple visits to the cave, and you can have 3, 4, 5 colleagues – even more – which you can’t do in the real cave.”

The ability to collaborate with others during the experience is invaluable, said Delphine Lacanette, a researcher and teacher with Bordeaux INP, France’s National School of Electronics, Computers, Telecommunications, Mathematics and Mechanics. “For those of us who study the cave, we can talk to each other and discuss the work while it is in progress,” she said. “It’s really very rewarding and complementary” to researchers’ brief visits inside the actual cave.

Learn more about how Dassault Systèmes is reconstructing global heritage sites in 3D

Watch more history in 3D:

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Take a Virtual Tour of the Lascaux Cave Paintings

in Art , History , Travel | December 5th, 2023 1 Comment

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The Las­caux Caves enjoyed a qui­et exis­tence for some 17,000 years.

Then came the sum­mer of 1940, when four teens inves­ti­gat­ed what seemed to be a fox’s den on a hill near Mon­ti­gnac, hop­ing it might lead to an under­ground pas­sage­way of local leg­end.

Once inside, they dis­cov­ered the paint­ings that have intrigued us ever since, expand­ing our under­stand­ing of pre­his­toric art and human ori­gins, and caus­ing us to spec­u­late on things we’ll nev­er have an answer to.

The boys’ teacher reached out to sev­er­al pre­his­to­ri­ans, who authen­ti­cat­ed the fig­ures, arranged for them to be pho­tographed and sketched , and col­lect­ed a num­ber of bone and flint arti­facts from the caves’ floors.

By 1948, exca­va­tions and arti­fi­cial lights ren­dered the caves acces­si­ble to vis­i­tors, who arrived in droves — as many as 1,800 in a sin­gle day.

Less than 20 years lat­er, The Collector’s Rosie Lesso writes , the caves were in cri­sis, and per­ma­nent­ly closed to tourism:

…the heat, humid­i­ty and car­bon diox­ide of all those peo­ple crammed into the dark and air­less cave was caus­ing an imbal­ance in the cave’s nat­ur­al ecosys­tem, lead­ing to the over­growth of molds and fun­gus­es that threat­ened to oblit­er­ate the  pre­his­toric paint­ings .

The lights that had helped vis­i­tors get an eye­ful of the paint­ings caused fad­ing and dis­col­oration that threat­ened their very exis­tence.

Declar­ing this major attrac­tion off lim­its was the right move, and those who make the jour­ney to the area won’t leave entire­ly dis­ap­point­ed. Las­caux IV , a painstak­ing repli­ca that opened to the pub­lic in 2016, offers even more verisimil­i­tude than the pre­vi­ous mod­el, 1983’s Las­caux II .

A hand­ful of researchers and main­te­nance work­ers are still per­mit­ted inside the actu­al caves, now a UNESCO World Her­itage site , but human pres­ence is lim­it­ed to an annu­al total of 800 hours, and every­one must be prop­er­ly out­fit­ted with ster­ile white over­alls, plas­tic head cov­er­ings, latex gloves, dou­ble shoe cov­ers, and LED fore­head lamps with which to view the paint­ings.

The rest of us rab­ble can get a healthy vir­tu­al taste of these vis­i­tors’ expe­ri­ence thanks to the dig­i­tal Las­caux col­lec­tion that the Nation­al Arche­ol­o­gy Muse­um cre­at­ed for the Min­istry of Cul­ture.

An inter­ac­tive tour offers close-up views of the famous paint­ings, with titles to ori­ent the view­er as to the par­tic­u­lars of what and where  — for exam­ple “red cow fol­lowed by her calf” in the Hall of the Bulls .

Click the but­ton in the low­er left for a more in-depth expert descrip­tion of the ele­ment being depict­ed:

The flat red col­or used for the sil­hou­ette is of a uni­for­mi­ty that is sel­dom attained, which implies a repeat­ed ges­ture start­ing from the same point, with com­ple­men­tary angles of pro­jec­tion of pig­ments. The out­lines have been cre­at­ed with a sten­cil, and only the hindquar­ters, horns and the line of the back have been laid down with a brush…The fact that the artist used the same pig­ment for both fig­ures with­out any pic­to­r­i­al tran­si­tion between them indi­cates that the fusion of the two sil­hou­ettes was inten­tion­al, indica­tive of the con­nec­tion between the calf and its moth­er. This duo was born of the same ges­ture, and the image of the off­spring is mere­ly the graph­ic exten­sion of that of its moth­er.

The inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour is fur­ther com­pli­ment­ed by a trove of his­toric pho­tographs and inter­views , geo­log­i­cal con­text , con­ser­va­tion updates and anthro­po­log­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions sug­gest­ing the paint­ings had a func­tion well beyond visu­al art.

Begin your vir­tu­al inter­ac­tive vis­it to the Las­caux Cave here .

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Archae­ol­o­gists May Have Dis­cov­ered a Secret Lan­guage in Las­caux & Chau­vet Cave Paint­ings, Per­haps Reveal­ing a 20,000-Year-Old “Pro­to-Writ­ing” Sys­tem

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

–  Ayun Hal­l­i­day  is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of  the East Vil­lage Inky  zine and author, most recent­ly, of  Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo  and  Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book . Fol­low her  @AyunHalliday .

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Comments (1) |

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The discovery of the monumental Lascaux cave in 1940 brought with it a new era in our knowledge of both prehistoric art and human origins. Today, the cave continues to feed our collective imagination and to profoundly move new generations of visitors from around the world.

• archeologie.culture.fr

The visit of Lascaux IV

1 - hall and departure for the tour, 2 - reception and ticketing, 3 - belvedere - vézère valley, 4 - shelter, 6 - lascaux workshop, 7 - theater of paleolithic art, 8 - cinema 'lascaux and the world', 9 - gallery of the imaginary, 10 - immersion room, 12 - lascaux café, p1 - parking car, p2 - parking car + camping-car, p3 - parking bus.

Start your visit at the Lascaux IV lookout. From here, you can enjoy the view over the Vézère Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Continuing on your way, you’ll come to the entrance to the replica. Inside, the atmosphere is that of a real cave.

In this area, you will discover the main panels of Lascaux, in a resolutely modern scenography, with tour companions offering commentary and augmented reality. A fun and educational version is available for young visitors.

Visitors will discover three of the most important milestones in our knowledge of prehistory through a series of short “scenes”. You’ll become a witness to some exciting scientific discoveries and revolutions!

Comfortably seated, the film “Lascaux and the World” offers a philosophical approach to the visit of the original cave and the different decorated caves in the world. Prepare yourself for an astonishing experience…

In this room, you can explore the link between cave art and contemporary art. Surrounding you is a wall of 90 screens featuring images and works by renowned artists such as Miro, Tapies and Picasso.

A new scenographic system has been added to enhance the visitor experience. It uses the latest image technologies. Let yourself be transported by the various immersive shows that will help you discover prehistory through your emotions…

The Occitanie region regroups 8 UNESCO World Heritage sites to visit, including the city of Carcassonne, the pont du Gard, the Canal du Midi or the episcopal city of Albi !

Périgord or Dordogne benefits from a particularly temperate climate which makes it a pleasant region to live in all seasons and a privileged destination for your next vacation. Visit Dordogne

Popular all year round for its mild climate, the beauty of its landscapes and its many activities, the Gironde is a destination of choice. Visit Gironde

Go on an excursion and admire the hillsides of the vineyards, the lavender fields and be lulled by the song of the cicadas. Visit Provence

We can create a totally tailor-made trip according to your very own desires. There are a lot of possibilities that you might be interested in or that we can suggest to you.

Visit the Lascaux cave

Discover the masterpiece of prehistory

The cave of Lascaux is located in the Périgord in the Dordogne department in the southwest of France. A guided tour of Lascaux is an essential part of your stay in the Dordogne Valley . It is the masterpiece of prehistory. This priceless treasure, classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, will transport you a few millennia back in time to discover the beginnings of life on Earth.

This tour is available all year round. For groups bigger than 8 people, please contact us .

What will I do during this tour ?

A tour of the Lascaux cave replica

The Lascaux cave located in the commune of Montignac-Lascaux in the Dordogne department in the Vézère valley is one of the most important decorated caves of the Upper Paleolithic by the number and the aesthetic quality of its works. It is sometimes called “the Sistine Chapel of cave art”. It was discovered in 1940 by 4 local teenagers who discovered what they thought was just a hole in the hill of Lascaux, they then decided to enlarge it and came face to face with these paintings made by our Cro-Magnon ancestors.

Today the original cave is closed to the public in order to preserve this site which is listed as a World Heritage Site by the UNSECO. However, in order to allow everyone to admire the masterpieces of prehistory, a reconstruction of the Lascaux site has been made. Get ready to go back in time by diving into the heart of the almost complete replica of the cave thanks to Lascaux IV and its 3D digital tour .

Good to know

This guided tour includes :

• Transport from and to your hôtel
• English speaking private guide / driver
• Comfortable car or van

This guided tour does not includes :

• Entrance fees to sites/museums
• Lunch, drinks
• Personal insurance and expenses

Coronavirus Informations

All vehicles are cleaned after each service, guides wear masks and all activities, museums & attraction visited apply strict sanitary rules. Bring your masks as they are compulsory in the vans.

Need more infos ?

Our tour guide know perfectly the destinations they sell and will tailor-make a tour to your unique needs.

E-mail [email protected]

Phone +33 (0)6 51 84 02 79

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