Grotte de Niaux

Niaux

An immense porch opens at 678 metres above sea level, above the Vicdessos valley. Visitors have left graffiti there for centuries: the oldest legible one bears the date 1602. Yet nobody paid attention to the painted animals at the back. In September 1906, Commandant Molard and his sons guessed their antiquity; Émile Cartailhac, informed, entered the cave on 28 September and authenticated them. He published with the abbé Breuil in 1908. Seven or eight hundred metres from the entrance, the Salon noir brings together more than 70 animals on six panels: bison, horses, ibex, a deer, drawn in black. Charcoal from these paintings places them in the Magdalenian, around 14,000 years in raw radiocarbon age. In 1970, divers discovered beyond the lakes the Clastres network, with more than 500 human footprints and five painted animals. The cave has been listed since 1911 and can be visited as the real thing, without facsimile, in groups of 25 people by lamplight.

Sites touristiques Ariège (SESTA) — Dossier de presse de la grotte de Niaux ↗

Getting there: D56 above the village of Niaux, 4 km south of Tarascon-sur-Ariège. Online booking compulsory; groups of no more than 25 people, visit of about 1 h 45 in the dark, with a portable lamp; walking shoes and warm clothing (12 °C); forbidden to children under 6. The Parc de la Préhistoire at Tarascon shows facsimiles. Coordinates from OpenStreetMap.

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

Ambient sound