In 1994, three amateur cavers felt a strange waft of air emanating from a cliff where the Ardèche gorge ties itself into knots near the Pont d’Arc arch. They didn’t know it, but they’d just discovered the oldest art gallery on Earth. And now it is opening to the public for the first time – sort of.
I had a sneak preview, but on 25 April it’s the official launch of the Caverne du Pont d’Arc, a replica cave built at a cost of €55m, over four years, to showcase the 36,000-year-old art discovered in the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, named after one of the 1994 cavers, Jean-Marie Chauvet.
What astonished scientists about the original artwork was not just the age – the Chauvet paintings were twice as old as those in Lascaux, in the Dordogne – but the artistic virtuosity. Lines were fluid, technical shading was superb. And these palaeo Picassos had come up with proto-cartoons to animate their ice-age fauna.
Why, then, build a replica? To save the paintings from the fate of those in Lascaux, faded beneath algal slime introduced by opening the cave to the public (though it was closed in 1963 and a replica opened in 1983). For that reason only scientists have been permitted inside Chauvet. (An exception was made for director Werner Herzog to film Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 2010.) So a collaboration between the Ardèche department and Rhône Alpes region has built the world’s largest cave replica instead.
The result is fabulously sci-fi. Scientists shot 6,000 photos and laser-scanned every fissure of the Chauvet cave to build a computerised map. From this, they selected 80 art sites and reassembled them like a speleological jigsaw. Next, they engineered a millimetre-perfect steel skeleton, suspended it in a hangar and coated it in mortar and cement.
Every tiny detail has been recreated within the cave; from quartz in the resin stalactite formations and fossils in the “limestone”, to the humidity and temperature of the original cave; from images painted, like the originals, in ochre and Scots pine charcoal by artists who were selected for their ability to draw from memory, to the footprints and scratches of prehistoric bears.
So, don’t call this tourism. “This is a scientific and cultural site with touristic potential,” says Sébastien Mathon, the scientist who has pulled together Pont d’Arc for the past 12 years. “This is a place to give a sense of the origin of us all.”
Can it withstand the hype? The answer is a qualified yes. The cave is brilliant. It looks like the real thing. The artwork is exquisite. Wild horses snort. Stocky rhinos batter each other. Lionesses gather to attack scattering bison. At times, these images possess an atavistic power; dark, potent, primal.
The issue is whether you can suspend your disbelief. Tour groups on the preview and a railed walkway made that tricky for me – visit off-peak if you can. Nevertheless, the execution is flawless. And prices are cheap – €13 doesn’t seem much to time-travel to the dawn of civilisation.
• Caverne du Pont-d’Arc: adults €13, children €6.50, under-10s free, cavernedupontdarc.fr. The trip was provided by Ardèche Tourisme and Chateau de Balazuc (rooms from €140 B&B)
