Grotte de La Mouthe

Les Eyzies

In the spring of 1895, the son of the Lapeyre family lowered the floor of a cave used as a barn, walled up since 1845. He cleared the entrance to a gallery and noticed there, with his friends, an engraved bison. Émile Rivière, who was staying at the Hôtel de Cro-Magnon, obtained a mission from the Académie des sciences as early as June. Access to the gallery had been blocked by ancient layers: what lay behind could not be recent. This argument made La Mouthe the first decorated cave in France recognised as prehistoric. On 29 August 1899, Rivière found near the entrance a red sandstone lamp, engraved with an ibex head, which had burned animal fat. The abbé Breuil recorded the figures in 1900, and Émile Cartailhac came to see them in 1902, the year of his ‘Mea culpa’. The cave, private property, was listed as a historic monument on 11 June 1953. It is one of the sites of the Vézère valley inscribed on the World Heritage List.

French Ministry of Culture (POP) — Grotte de la Mouthe contenant des peintures préhistoriques ↗

Getting there: Private property south of the town of Les Eyzies (impasse de la Mouthe), not open to visits. The La Mouthe lamp is in the Musée d'Archéologie nationale, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Coordinates of the entrance from OpenStreetMap.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound