Perigueux and the Lascaux Cave's Prehistoric Paintings

Perigueux is a wonderful town, especially if like me you enjoy French culture's pate and foie gras. This town is renowned for the quality of its products. The best part of our stop in the area was for me our visit of some prehistoric caves that are so numerous in this part of the world. Lascaux II cave is a reproduction of the original Lascaux cave that had to be closed to public due to the slow decay of the beautiful and unique man-made paintings on the walls. The reproductions are so real you can't differentiate them from the real ones. Even the cave has been reconstructed to look like the original one only 200m away. Artists used the same instruments (wood, animal hair, etc) and pigments (red and yellow ocres mainly, charcoal, etc) to paint the figures. Other caves also showed original engravings and paintings, we even saw some pochoir of human hands!! I felt very special and lucky to finally be able to witness something our ancestors did thousands of years ago. Isabelle