Lascaux (Caves)
Palaeolithic site / Visit of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and her husband for the 70th anniversary of its discovery (12 September 2010)
Lascaux is wreathed in a great number of legends. It is claimed for example that the Resistance fighter André Malraux hid arms there in 1944. False. What is true, however, is that the cave was closed in the past a victim of its own success and that it was the very same André Malraux, then Minister of Cultural Affairs, who took the decision in April 1963, at a time when the Dordogne’s most famous monument was attracting over a thousand visitors a day and the paintings were suffering as a result of the sudden increase in carbon dioxide! Twenty years later, a replica, named Lascaux II, was built a few hundred metres away.
Situated in the village of Montrignac, forty kilometres from Périgueux, the Lascaux caves are the Dordogne’s most famous site, listed as a historic monument and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The 250 metres of underground gallery constitute the most remarkable painted caves of the Palaeolithic age.
Fr. Henri Breuil, the first prehistorian to visit Lascaux on 21 September 1940, nicknamed it ‘the Sistine chapel of wall paintings’. A few days earlier, on the 8th September, a 17 year-old youth named Marcel Ravidat, out walking his dog Robot, discovered a hole where a rabbit had taken refuge escaping the clutches of the otherwise unimpeachable dog. On 12th September, the young Marcel returned to explore the opening with a friend, Jacques Marsal, and two Parisians, Georges Agniel and Simon Coencas. Little did the boy know that he was about to make history! With its horses, aurochs, bison, stags and ibexes, bears, rhinoceros and big cats, this is truly a sacred place; prehistorians see Lascaux as a sanctuary and a religious monument. Marcel Ravidat continued to be moved by these animal engravings throughout his life, but did not live to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their discovery, passing away, aged 72, in 1995.
Whether we like it or not, Lascaux is still a living, breathing place, regularly affected by white marks, fungi and other bacteria all scrupulously examined and treated. On 21 January 2010, the caves were placed under the protection of Yves Coppens, President of the Science Commission charged with their conservation. For these are fragile little things and 18,000 years old. (Carbon-14 dating).
