Monaco’s Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique will soon welcome a fascinating exploration of the famous Lascaux Cave, with scale models, realistic reconstructions and original objects from the site coming to the Principality for a very special six-month exhibition.
The Lascaux Cave, part of a historically important cave system near the town of Montignac in the Dordogne region of France, is a prehistory lover’s dream.
More than 600 incredibly well-preserved wall paintings of hunting scenes and typical flora and fauna of the Upper Paleolithic period are represented here, each a work of art left behind by the people who inhabited the region some 17,000 years ago.
Discovered in 1940 by an 18-year-old whose dog disappeared down a hole left by an uprooted tree, the network of underground caverns was explored and then protected as an historical landmark in the following decades. Visitors were allowed to descend into the incredible space between 1948 and 1963, by which time the deterioration of the site forced it to close to the public.
Today, people can instead discover faithful reproductions of many of the wonders of the caves at the nearby visitors’ centre.
LASCAUX À MONACO
From 19th April, and running for a full six months, the new temporary exhibit called Lascaux à Monaco at the Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique will offer one such reproduction.
Visitors to the museum will be invited to step into the past and view some of the special pieces found within the actual cave, including wall art, reconstructions and even original objects from the site.
Some of the highlights include an amazing 1/10 scale model of the Grotte de Lascaux replete with the famous prehistoric paintings, realistic reproductions of a Cro-Magnon family and interactive virtual reality experiences.
For more details, click here.
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Photo source: Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique
*Originally published on 10th April 2024