Lascaux International Center of Parietal Art — Attraction in Sarlat-la-Canéda

Lascaux 4 is a state of the art, 21st century museum and shows you the museum of the future. No tool available to the museum curators has been left unused, physical displayed, interactive displays, video, interactive digital displays, augmented reality, 3D movies, virtual reality etc. the way in which information is made available is literally without end.

Lascaux 4 starts with a guided tour through the facsimile of the original cave, but unlike Lascaux 2 the whole cave has been recreated in astonishingly detail. At the start of the tour you are presented with a tablet and headphones which enable you to hear your guide through headphones which makes for a very pleasant experience. Guides are extremely knowledgeable, approachable and enthusiastic! After the extensive tour through the facsimile which is truly spectacular and worth alone the time and money, the real fun starts. In the exhibition space all parts of the Lascaux cave are pulled apart and the elements of the facsimile are present here to explore at your leisure. Here is where the tablet comes into its own right, it knows where you are and presents a multitude of options with each display item, painting or object. It allows you to interact with several displays and you can store pictures, informations etc and have it emailed to you after you leave the museum. The tablet allows augmented reality, recognising the paintings you look at and tells you more about them, view videos and in some instances has virtual reality available to view the rest of the original cave around you on the screen.

The displays allowing you to recreate cave art yourself are quite fun and entertaining! The video halls are brilliant, although there 3D movie could do with some more editing or dramatic features, I am not entirely sure it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

The virtual reality goggles allowing you to explore Lascaux are breathtaking and a stroke of genius. You can fly through the cave, explore the art up close. Go down the shaft or explore the felines which are otherwise impossible to see.

In Lascaux 4 you see our creative past but it is also a display of our creative future, this is a museum of the future displaying what the human mind is capable of creating both now and 20000 years ago.

Do not miss Lascaux 4, it doesn’t matter that it is a copy, you would never know, the imagery displayed are the original works and this way the real cave can be kept and preserved for the future. An exceptional museum that everyone should visit...

I have wanted to visit these paintings since I heard about them as a teenager. I can absolutely recommend a visit to Lascaux as one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Book online and book early because the best time slots fill up fast (particularly if you don’t speak French, I recommend a guided tour over the audio guided tour) Do not be deterred by the fact that it is a reconstruction of the original, it is highly faithful and the experience is like entering a true cavern, plus it is for the good of the original that they continue to do what they can to stop any further degradation of the art. As our tour guide said: the reconstruction is accurate to the millimeter compared to the original and is, in fact, closer to the cave as it was found in it’s original condition than the real cave is to it’s former self- due to the continuing fight against years of damage.

My primary concern was that I was bringing along 2 small children (aged 6 and 9) and I thought they might become bored but I couldn’t have been more wrong. They were very engaged and interested and I didn’t once hear that they were bored!

If there’s anything to critique it’s the AV portion of the tour with the tablets, while being very informative and rich, it suffers due to the fact that the tablets don’t always function as intended and that made my experience suffer because I had two children and an older adult with me who were constantly brining me their tablets because the audio wouldn’t play, or would play the incorrect information for their location, or they accidentally exited their screen and didn’t know how to get back to the correct one. I appreciate that I could experience the museum in my native language but I think the system needs some work. Overall in the scheme of things it was a minor annoyance at worst.

A recommendation: it would be very interesting to have a portion of the museum dedicated to how the Lascaux IV reproduction was constructed. I found that I had as many questions about the museum as I had about the original cave! Maybe a little documentary shown in the cinema in rotation with the short film that currently...

My wife 2 young kids and I were super excited to visit as heard a lot of positive things, but sadly was super disappointing. Having arrived late we were put on the next available tour which was French as we had missed the last English one and given a headset. Upon putting on the headset the recording clearly said we were allowed to take photos but with no flash, once we entered the cave my wife proceeded to take a photo only be aggressively told not to with the tour guide rather forcefully waving her hands around in front of my wife’s face. When asking what she was doing she told us very aggressively she had told us we were not allowed to take photos on her tour. When try to explain that a) we were on the recorded tour in English and it clearly said we could take photos b) we had headphones on so wouldn’t have been able to hear and c) we had the English tour as we are not native French speakers so wouldn’t have been able to understand her even if we didn’t have the headphones on! To cut a long story short our young kids were surprised by such unnecessarily aggressive behaviour and when we raised this at reception with the manager, clearly knowing the guide was in the wrong, she had already complained about us as a disruptive group! When attempting to discuss this with the manager she vehemently denied that the recording said we can take photos (anyone who has been on a tour will attest to this being a total lie) and continued to say we were in the wrong yet refused to even acknowledge that, even if I am being very generous here, there might have been some element of confusion but no, she persisted to live in a parallel universe – to say she was clueless would be giving her undue credit. The cherry on top was when we were told that wasn’t it nice of them to accommodate us for being late…another trip to the parallel universe I’m afraid as in addition to the near E80 ticket for a family of 4 we paid a E5 supplement to get a flexible ticket! Having visited many places in our trip this was hands down the worst – in the words of Eurovision – Adrien from Castlenaud – 12 points; Ameline from Lascaux...