The Vézère Valley in 4 days

The cave found in 1940 above Montignac and closed since 1963, reproduced in full at the International Centre for Cave Art, opened in 2016.

A small town on both banks of the Vézère below Lascaux hill, with timber-balconied houses leaning over the water and lanes up to the castle.

A listed village in a loop of the river on the 45th parallel, whose 12th-century Romanesque church hosts summer concerts of the Périgord Noir festival.

A limestone cliff a kilometre long and 80 metres high, with around a hundred shelters lived in for 55,000 years, later a medieval fort.

A rock shelter where Magdalenian hunters carved a frieze of near life-size horses and bison in high relief, seen in soft daylight.

One of the last caves in France where you can see original polychrome paintings: over 200 figures, mostly bison, along a narrow 125-metre passage.

Set into the cliff at Les Eyzies, one of France's richest prehistoric collections of tools, ornaments and portable art, with views over the Vézère.

Known as the crystal cathedral, a single great chamber some forty metres underground near Le Bugue, hung with stalactites, draperies and flowstone.