Entrance to the Pech Merle cave

Pech Merle is a cave which opens onto a hillside at Cabrerets in the Lot département of the Midi-Pyrénées region in France, about 35 minutes by road east of Cahors. It is the home of one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France which remain open to the general public.

Extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture (some 25,000 years B.C.) Some of the paintings and engravings, however, could date from the later Magdalenian era (16,000 years B.C.)