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One of the biggest tourist attractions in southern France has been closed to the public for decades. The Lascaux cave contains prehistoric paintings too fragile for big crowds. A near-perfect replica has opened nearby. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, it tries to give visitors a real cave experience.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: On a September day in 1940, while much of Europe was engulfed in war, four teenagers were walking through a forest in southern France when their dog fell down a hole. As they crawled in to rescue it, they discovered a cave with hundreds of prehistoric animals painted across its walls and ceiling. It turned out to be one of the world's best examples of prehistoric art. The Lascaux cave became a popular tourist site after the war, but it had to be sealed off to the public in 1963.
Now the French government has spent $64 million building a replica to recreate the excitement of that first discovery. As visitors walk down a ramp toward the cave's entrance, sounds of the surrounding forest on a summer day are played on speakers. Dina Casson is part of the team that designed the museum experience.
DINA CASSON: When you visit the original cave, you're actually walking through the forest with these sounds. And we wanted to hold as much of that aspect of it as we could.
BEARDSLEY: Once inside, the temperature is cooled so it feels like a real cave. As eyes adjust to the darkness, there are suddenly animals everywhere. The paintings and nearly a thousand engravings were done 20,000 years ago. Archaeologist Jean-Pierre Chadelle says these early human artists used very advanced techniques.
JEAN-PIERRE CHADELLE: (Through interpreter) You can see how they used a magnesium pencil for the black horns of this bull. And here for the softness of the muzzle they used another technique. They blew dried paint made from ochre through a tool crafted from hollow bird bones.
BEARDSLEY: Chadelle used to give tours in the original cave, but it became a victim of its own success. Museum director Guillaume Colombo says the carbon dioxide and humidity generated by all the visitors caused mold and mushrooms to form on some of the paintings.
GUILLAUME COLOMBO: (Through interpreter) Lascaux was so well-preserved for so long because it was sealed like a champagne bottle, so it wasn't affected by temperature changes. And there is a layer of clay in the soil that waterproofed the cave. That's why Lascaux has no stalagmites or stalactites.
BEARDSLEY: Once outside the cave, visitors can delve into the mysteries of these prehistoric humans and their art through interactive exhibits available in 10 languages. It's all inside a glass museum that looks as if it was slipped into a fault line on the hillside. Norwegian Thorsen Kjetilis is one of the architects. He calls the museum a link between the past and present.
THORSEN KJETILIS: It is a very contemporary building cut into the landscape, out of the landscape, just on the borderline between the vertical forest behind it and the horizontality of the farmlands in front of it.
BEARDSLEY: Lascaux IV is the third and most ambitious attempt to replicate the famous cave. Thanks to 3D digital scanning of the actual cave walls, the copy is precise down to three millimeters. Polystyrene and resin recreate every nook and cranny. High-definition images of the paintings were then projected onto the walls and copied pixel by pixel. Francis Ringenbach led the team of 34 artists during the three-year job.
FRANCIS RINGENBACH: (Through interpreter) It was emotional work because we discovered new details as we were decrypting it. And at times, I had realized I was imitating the exact gestures and strokes of the prehistoric artist.
BEARDSLEY: Ringenbach says that's when a shiver would go down his spine. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Montignac, France.