There is a question worth settling before booking anything in the Vézère valley, because the trip turning out well or disappointing depends on the answer: is a copy good enough for you?
It is not a rhetorical question. At Lascaux there is no alternative.
01 Twelve hundred visitors a day and a closed cave
The cave was discovered on 12 September 1940 and opened to the public on 14 July 1948. For fifteen years it was visited normally, and that was the problem.
In 1963 it closed. The reason is simple to state and hard to reverse: 1,200 visitors a day had visibly damaged the paintings. The carbon dioxide people exhale, plus the heat and humidity they bring, upset the balance of a cavity that had been stable for millennia.
And the problems did not end with the closure. Around 2001, after a change to the air-conditioning system, a white mould appeared; in 2007 and 2008 grey and black growths were documented. The cave remains a patient under treatment, with access limited to the conservation team.
Fifteen years of visits were enough to damage paintings that had been intact for at least seventeen thousand years.
02 Four copies in sixty years
The answer to that closure has been to reproduce the cave, and not once. Lascaux II was installed in 1983 some 200 metres from the original and reproduces the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery, using pigments of the same kind as the prehistoric ones: iron oxide, charcoal and ochre.
Lascaux III launched in 2012 and is different: five exact reproductions of the Nave and the Shaft designed to travel as an international exhibition. It is a copy on wheels.
And Lascaux IV was inaugurated in December 2016, on the same hill as the original cave and some 400 metres from it. It reproduces the entire cavity at full scale. It is the visit most people make when they say they have been to Lascaux.
03 What is really in there
It is worth knowing what is being reproduced, because the figures help calibrate the place. The cave contains close to 6,000 figures and over 900 identified animals, of which 605 have been precisely identified.
The dominant animal is the horse, with 364 representations, followed at a distance by stags, with 90. And the largest figure is an aurochs 5.2 metres long, a scale photographs do not convey and a full-size replica does.
Dating places it between 17,000 and 22,000 years ago, in the early Magdalenian. Against that distance, the difference between seeing the original wall and seeing a faithful reconstruction is something each person decides, and it is worth deciding before paying for a ticket.
04 And if you want an original: seventy-eight places a day
The good news is that in this same valley original parietal art can be seen. The Font-de-Gaume cave, at Les Eyzies, remains open to the public under a very restricted regime.
The figures explain why it has to be planned. 78 people a day are admitted, split into groups of up to 13. Online booking is compulsory and tickets are released in one-month blocks, so at most the next thirty days are visible.
Translated: if you arrive in the valley and decide on the spot that you want to see an original, you almost certainly will not be able to. This is a visit you book before buying the flight, not after.
05 The whole valley, which is what almost nobody looks at
The commonest planning mistake is treating the valley as a place with one attraction. It is not: it is a concentration of sites spread along a few kilometres of river, and that density is the real reason to come.
The cause is geological. The Vézère has cut its bed into limestone and left cliffs with natural overhangs at mid-height: dry shelters, well oriented and with water below. Anyone passing through settled in the same kind of place.
That is why the sensible way to organise the days is to string sites together instead of booking one big one. Comparing a replica with an original, and a rock shelter with a deep cave, teaches more than any of the four visits on its own.
06 How to put it together
The order that works is this: book first what has a capacity limit, that is the original, and build the rest of the trip around that date and hour. Everything else allows more leeway.
Second, go to the replica after the original, not before. The reverse order leaves the feeling of seeing a watered-down version; in this order, the replica is appreciated for what it is, which is a remarkable piece of reproduction work.
And third, the season. From May to September the area gives between 48.6 and 81.2 millimetres of rain a month and between 207 and 276 hours of sun, which is when the valley is best covered on foot or by bike between visits. In July and August everything works the same, but the time slots sell out sooner.
Bernard Gagnon Draa-Tafilalet for someone who wants the hard erg, not the roadside one
László Szalai Split-Dalmatia for someone who wants to go from the beach to seventeen hundred metres
César Pérez