Trois Frères

About

The cave of Trois-Frères is located in the commune of Montesquieu-Advantès in the region of Volvestre (north of Couserans in Pyrenean Piemonte), in the department of Ariège, in the region of Occitanie, France. It is an adorned cave, called a grotto-sanctuary, of the Magdalenian (Superior Paleolithic), which has delivered little furniture. But it is home to the iconic figure of the "dancing shaman", and its more than 1,300 engravings and paintings represent more than half of the parietal art of the Ariegean Pyrenees.

Abbé Breuil (1952) ranked him among the six giants of prehistoric parietal art. It is part of the karst network of the caves of the Volp, a classified site including the cave of Enlène, one of the richest caves of the Ariegean Pyrenees in Magdalenian furniture with numerous engraved plaques, and the cave of the Tuc d'Audoubert, which delivered the very famous "statuary group of clay bison", number of parietal paintings and objects decorated or not. These three caves are part of the network of caves decorated with the Pyreneo-Cantabric chain and are not open to the public.