The archaeological museum
During your visit you will become the privileged witnesses of 3,000 years of daily life of the inhabitants of the Balmes cave...
The exhibition is organized around major themes: exchanges with other cultures and their influence on ceramics and finery...
The technical evolution of tools, from the flint arrowhead to the polished green rock and finally bronze... Or the perfect mastery of stone polishing...
Dates, times and prices : see our website
Then came the golds and gildings of the baroque art present in the churches and chapels from the 17th century. A profusion of colors as in the Saint-Sébastien chapel in Val Cenis Lanslevillard which houses very well preserved wall paintings. A must see! The highlight of the visit is the reconstruction of a Neolithic habitat, at the beginning of the occupation of the Balmes cave 5,600 years ago.
It faithfully reproduces the different areas of activity in the cave: the "kitchen area" with birch bark and ceramic containers, the grinding wheel for grinding grain and the southern-influenced pot for cooking food.
We also discover the "workshop" where tools made of bone, deer antlers and arrowheads made of local green rock are manufactured.
Dates, times and prices : see our website
The cave is 150 m above the level of the Arc and it dominates the valley and the village of Val Cenis Sollières Sardières. In the 19th century it was used as a cheese cellar, before the discovery in 1972 of pottery shards by amateur speleologists. Very quickly, the archaeologists measured the importance of this site.
More than twenty years of excavations allowed them to bring new knowledge and to better understand the settlement of the first farmers-breeders in the Alps.
Dates, times and prices : see our website