Inauguration of The Pont d'-Arc Cave

10 April 2015 - Events - France

On Friday 10 April, the Pont d’Arc Cave was inaugurated in the presence of French President François Hollande. Located in the hills of the Pont-d’Arc valley (southern France), this structure is a replica of the decorated Paleolithic Chauvet Cave, a UNESCO World Heritage site. With a 3,000 sq. metre footprint and 8,180 sq. metres of decorated surfaces, this is the largest reproduction of a cave in the world. The setting for the project (value: €14m) was created on a general contracting basis by a consortium notably comprising Campenon Bernard Régions and Cofex Régions (VINCI Construction France) and Freyssinet France (Soletanche Freyssinet/VINCI Construction). This works package notably involved creating a shell in sculpted sprayed concrete (8,500 sq. metres), the prefabricated, hand-painted, resin wall panels, as well as stalactites and various concretions in resin. In terms of its scale and the techniques deployed, notably the use of a 3D model to create the cave paintings and the framework of the shell as well as for planning the successive stages of the works, the project constitutes a world first and establishes a standard in this field. The site openened to the public on 25 April 2015.