Padirac Cave

Interesting facts

In 1948 cave diver Guy de Lavaur explored the Montvalent spring in a wetsuit his wife made by gluing foam rubber onto his old-fashioned bathing costume.

Padirac is the second most visited cave in Europe, after Postojna in Slovenia.

According to legend, the English hid a treasure sewn into a calfskin in the chasm, and when Martel bought the land, the sellers kept rights to a share.

As early as 1595, people were climbing down into the chasm on perilous contraptions to collect saltpetre.

Martel's first river trip in 1889 was made in a folding canvas boat of the Osgood type, which the explorers named the Crocodile.

When Martel returned in September 1890, more than a thousand onlookers gathered at the rim to watch the expedition go down.

Martel's explorations were funded by Georges Beamish, heir to the Irish brewing firm Beamish and Crawford, who co-founded the cave's operating company in 1898.

In 1900 Martel declared his farthest point the humanly possible end and banned further exploration, a ban not lifted until 1937.

In 1947, 75 kg of fluorescent dye poured into the cave's lake took more than three months to reappear at springs near the Dordogne.

Deep in the network, explorers in 1983 found mammoth and rhinoceros bones, deer antlers and worked flint tools.

Why it is worth it

The Gouffre de Padirac opens in the Jurassic limestone of the Causse de Gramat, in the Lot department of southwestern France, as a nearly circular shaft about 35 metres across and 103 metres deep. It was once a closed underground chamber; at some unknown moment its roof collapsed, leaving an open well that local people long associated with the devil. At the bottom flows an underground river that has been carving its way through the plateau for one to two million years, part of a karst network of which more than 58 km had been mapped by 2025.

Early visitors went down in baskets on ropes without ever finding the way on. The river itself was discovered in July 1889 by the explorer Édouard-Alfred Martel, who returned the next day with a small boat and travelled about two kilometres along the river. In 1890 his team found a vast chamber, some 60 by 40 metres, whose vault rises more than 70 metres above a small pool. Martel set up a company to open the cave to the public; the first tourists came on 1 November 1898 and the official opening followed in April 1899. Exploration continued for more than a century: in 2014 a diver travelled underground from the resurgence at Montvalent near the Dordogne to Padirac, a journey of about 20 km through fifteen flooded sections.

Visitors descend about 75 metres into the chasm by lifts or by the old staircase, then walk and take a boat along the river as far as the Lac des Grands Gours, a lake held back by rimstone dams that marks the end of the tourist route. The galleries stay at around 13 °C all year. Padirac is the most visited underground site in France, with more than half a million visitors a year in recent seasons. Folklore still attaches to it: one legend says the devil struck the ground with his heel to open the abyss in front of a saint riding a mule, and that the mule cleared it in one leap.

Getting there

Padirac lies north of Gramat, about 38 km from Brive-la-Gaillarde, and the nearest airport is Brive–Souillac (BVE), about 29 km away.

Padirac Cave

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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