Plan your visit
Grotte du Mas-d’Azil 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 du Mas-d’Azil
One of the most astonishing caves in the Pyrenees, the Grotte du Mas-d'Azil in the Ariège is a colossal natural tunnel so vast that a road and a river both pass straight through it — one of the very few caves in the world you can drive through. Bored clean through a mountain by the river Arize, its immense arched mouth opens into a cathedral-like void, while side galleries preserve one of France's richest prehistoric records: the cave gave its name to a whole Ice Age culture, the Azilian, and yielded famous carved artefacts now treasured by archaeologists. A visitor centre and guided galleries tell the story of the hunters who sheltered here for thousands of years. Monumental, geologically extraordinary and steeped in prehistory, the Mas-d'Azil is a truly unique Pyrenean marvel.