Day Twenty Three: Cave Castle, Prehistory, and a Ghost

Tens of thousands of years ago, this part of France was teeming with prehistoric activity. Dozens of sites around here are dedicated to early man and there are plenty of caves, including Lascaux, to visit. Today, we visited a cave that was used both in prehistoric times as well as in the more recent past. Maison Forte de Reignac is a newly opened site; a castle that was built into a cave.




The house is actually much larger than it appears on the outside, as it extends deep within the cave.


The first part of the house is a museum dedicated to the prehistoric tools and artifacts recovered there:


Skulls which show the evolution of man, for those crazy people who believe in that sort of nonsense:



If this is what I think it is, sadly there has not been much evolution over the centuries....







The last room of the house is dedicated the wonderful world of torture that existed back then. We decided to leave out the pictures; the torture devices make things like water boarding sound like a Disney experience. After the Maison, we stopped at a nearby prehistoric park. A little cheezy for the adults, but the girls really enjoyed it. And we all actually learned a lot:





Finally, we stopped by the Chateau de Puymartin, a fifteenth century castle with a ghost. As the story goes, the lord of the manor came back from war to find his wife with another man. He killed the lover and imprisoned his wife in the tower for fifteen years, dropping food through a trap door in the ceiling. After her death, he buried her in the wall where she remains to this day. How lovely.




Tomorrow, we will change things up from torture, prehistoric shenanigans and fifteenth century spousal abuse to visit les beaux villages of Monpazier and Belves!