Plan your visit
Grotte de Villars 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 Grotte de Villars
In the green Périgord Vert north of Périgueux, the Grotte de Villars is a beautiful cave that offers a rare double treasure: dazzling geology and prehistoric art. Its long galleries are richly decorated with fine white and honey-coloured concretions, delicate draperies and, remarkably, some formations tinted a soft blue by traces of mineral. Deeper in, the cave preserves Palaeolithic paintings some 19,000 years old — horses, a bison and a striking scene of a man confronting a bison, drawn in manganese black and partly veiled by a translucent film of calcite that has grown over them since. A guided visit reveals both the sparkling caverns and these fragile ancient images. Richly concretioned and prehistorically precious, the Grotte de Villars is one of the loveliest and most complete cave visits in the Dordogne.