Plan your visit
Grottes de Cougnac 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 Grottes de Cougnac
Near Gourdon in the Lot, the Grottes de Cougnac are a rare and precious site that unites two treasures in one: exceptional geological beauty and prehistoric painted art. The first cavern dazzles with a dense forest of slender ochre-tinted stalactites and stalagmites, some remarkably fine and needle-like. The second holds something far rarer — Palaeolithic paintings some 25,000 years old, among the oldest in France, depicting ibex, megaceros deer, mammoths and enigmatic human figures pierced by lines, drawn in red and black on the cave walls. To stand before these images is to meet the minds of Ice Age artists directly. Combining a magnificent crystal cave with authentic prehistoric masterpieces, the Grottes de Cougnac are one of the most moving and complete cave visits in the Quercy.