"Les Eyzies-de-Tayac" a Les Eyzies-de-Tayac Travel Page by mke1963

Quite simply, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac is the world's capital of prehistory. Many other places around the world can lay some claim to being important through virtue of a site or two, but Les Eyzies-de-Tayac has no less than 72 sites within just 7km of the village centre. This isn't even including the famous cave art galleries of Lascaux further up the Vezere valley, or the huge subterranean art formations at Rouffignac to the north. Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac is the home of Cro-Magnon man (Cro-Magnon is the part of the village by the railway level-crossing) and La Madeleine and La Moustier, both of which gave their names to prehistoric sequences, are nearby. The largest cave dwellings in Europe? Just north-east up the valley at St-Christophe. The earliest depiction of fish? At the Abris de Poisson to the north.

Not content with being almost infested with globally significant prehistoric sites, Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac is also beautifully situated at the confluence of the Vezere and Beune rivers, hugging the valley floor and snuggled under the great limestone cliff face. Many of the houses here are built into this cliff, including the chateau, now part of the National Museum of Prehistory, one of the world's great archaeological collections. Only 18,000 pieces of the museum's collection of 6 million artefacts are displayed.

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac has become overrun with tourists these days, part of the staple tour of the increasingly gentrified rural atmosphere of the Dordogne. Most of the shops in the village are unashamedly dedicated to the tourist trade: souvenir shops, cafes, restaurants and estate agents. Yet the Vezere Valley is a beautiful little part of the world, even if prehistoric civilizations are not your passion; the limestone hills provide easy walking territory and there are plenty of activities in the area to keep even the most energetic of visitors happy.