A Private Day Trip from Sarlat to Prehistory Museum, Lascaux IV & Rouffignac for 2 persons

Pick up at your hotel or accommodation in Sarlat

Today we will come and pick you up at your hotel or accommodation in Sarlat or vicinity. 

Meet your English speaking driver/guide who is an Expert in Prehistory 

Today, meet your English speaking guide who is an expert of the Dordogne and who will go over the itinerary and program of this full day tour with you. Then, board your spacious, comfortable, air conditioned Mercedes minivan and begin to make your way to the Vezere Valley. 

Travel in a spacious Mercedes Minivan

Your private Sarlat Sightseeing Tour of Paleolithic Art in the Dordogne will take place in one of our very spacious Mercedes Minivans. This vehicle can take up to 8 persons normally but on this occasion, the vehicle will only be for you. This allows you to choose the seat that you think best in terms of social distancing while still enjoying the information passed on by your guide.

All our vehicles are equipped with an on board P/A system that allows you to hear the commentary of your driver/guide no matter where you are seated. Also, there is free Wi-Fi access on all tour vehicles. Bottled water is also available in all our vehicles.

Begin with a private visit of the National Prehistory Museum

Some 15,000 years B.C. unknown artists created breathtaking paintings, drawings and etchings inside caves of which the most extraordinary examples are found in the Dordogne area. During this day you will be introduced to this fascinating art and to the people who created it.

Start in Les Eyzies de Tayac for a guided visit of the National Prehistory Museum. Established in July 2004, the museum houses some 18,000 pieces and a collection of six million artifacts. The museum’s collections were established as early as 1913, when indefatigable researcher Denis Peyrony convinced the French state to acquire the Château des Eyzies, built at the end of the 16th century, and to transform it into an excavation warehouse that could double up as a museum.

Follow your guide on a private tour and discover the main chapters of the Hominids’ development through an anthropological frieze and a brief reminder of Africa’s history, starting with the early Australopithecines. Many themes are explored, including the legendary “Lucy”, the small 3.5-million-year-old woman discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. You will then visit the permanent exhibit galleries that will plunge you into the mists of time, revealing seven sequences that cover the entire Paleolithic era through an “ideal historiography”. 

Visit Innovative Lascaux IV Museum

Continue to Montignac where you will visit the brand new Lascaux IV cave – open December 2016. For the first time, all of Lascaux is revealed. A complete new replica retraces the discovery of the famous decorated cave.

But that’s not the end of the adventure: the entire site inquires into the position that Lascaux occupies in cave art and its relation to contemporary creation. The opening of the International Center for Cave Art marks the beginning of a new adventure combining the emotion of ancestral art and an important technological achievement.

Discover brand-new Lascaux IV International Center of Parietal Art. The museum is a triumph of technology: unlike any other cave visits, Lascaux 4 employs different set designs, displays, state-of-the-art interactive workshops and immersive technology to bring it to life.

For the very first time, all of the Lascaux cave paintings are revealed. This new center features an interactive gallery experience that blends Art, History and Culture with intelligence and sensitivity. At the heart of the experience you will discover a life size, state of the art facsimile cave that reveals the wonders of Lascaux as they were first seen.

In 2018, the museum was listed on Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Places to visit saying: “The Snohetta-designed complex features some 600 prehistoric paintings and 1,000 engravings, all painstakingly re-created by a team of two dozen artists working from physical castings and advanced 3-D digital scans or the original artwork”!

Finally, visit Font de Gaume or Rouffignac cave

Finally, end the tour with the visit of either Font de Gaume or Rouffignac Cave. The visit will depend on the availability of Font de Gaume cave at time of booking. This is our prefered cave as the Art Work is phenomenal and is the last remaining example of original polychrome paleolithic paintings of animals that can still be seen. However, the number of visitors being limited every day, the visit of this extraordinary cave will depend on how many tickets are still available at time of booking.

Font de Gaume cave reveals more than two hundred painted or engraved representations of bison, horses, mammoths and reindeer, of which many are polychrome. Grotte des Combarelles is a major site for the Magdalenian culture. Horses, bison, aurochs, lions, reindeer, and more: over 800 engravings and drawings of Quaternary Period fauna reveal themselves throughout the cave.

Rouffignac cave possesses original and authentic etchings and drawings. The Rouffignac cave was already mentioned in 1575 by François de Belleforest. In his ” Cosmographie universelle” he cites “paintings and animal traces”. In the 19th century, the cave was known as a tourist attraction.

Famous archaeologists like Henri Breuil, André Glory and Martel had visited the cave in the early 20th century, but it was only in 1956 when Louis-René Nougier and Romain Robert, two prehistorians from the Pyrenees, rediscovered and confirmed the cave art. The visit of Rouffignac cave is also less strenuous than that of Font de Gaume as most of the visit takes place on board an electric train.

After the visit of either one of these caves it will be time to return to Sarlat.