Plan your visit
Gouffre de Padirac is one of France’s great natural sites — bring good shoes and a camera. Locate it on the map, book a room nearby in a click, or add it to your travel list to build your itinerary.
About Gouffre de Padirac
One of the great natural wonders of France, the Gouffre de Padirac opens as a colossal shaft, some 35 metres wide and 75 metres deep, plunging into the limestone causse of the Lot. Lifts and staircases carry visitors down into the chasm to board flat-bottomed boats and glide along a mysterious underground river through galleries of extraordinary size, past soaring formations to the vast Salle du Grand Dôme, whose ceiling arches nearly 90 metres overhead. Discovered and first explored in the 1880s, it has been welcoming travellers ever since and remains one of the most visited caves in Europe. Cool, silent and awe-inspiring, a journey to the heart of Padirac feels like sailing into the very depths of the earth.