The Ice Age Caves of the Swabian Jura

Water cut caves into the limestone of the Swabian Jura, and around forty thousand years ago people sheltered in them. What they left in the floor is why six of these caves are World Heritage: small figures carved from mammoth ivory, among them a lion-headed figure and a female figure only a few centimetres high, along with flutes made from bird bone and ivory, the earliest known musical instruments anywhere. The caves themselves are unassuming, some little more than a chamber behind an overhang, and they are empty now. The finds are in museums at Blaubeuren and Ulm. Walking between the sites through farmland and beech gives some sense of a valley that was open tundra.

What you actually see

• Hohle Fels - a large chamber in the Ach valley, source of the small ivory figure.
• Vogelherd - a through-cave in the Lone valley with an archaeology park around it.
• The originals - the carvings and bone flutes displayed at Blaubeuren and Ulm.
• The two valleys - short walks between cave mouths through limestone farmland.

When to go

April to October, when the cave sites and the archaeology park keep regular hours. Several caves close over winter for hibernating bats. The museums in Blaubeuren and Ulm are open year-round and are worth seeing first, because the objects give the empty caves their meaning rather than the other way round.

Honest expectations

There is almost nothing to see on site: a fenced chamber, an information panel, a view down a valley. The best objects sit in museums that charge separately, and the famous carvings are genuinely tiny, a few centimetres each. The sites are scattered across two valleys with no useful public transport, lighting inside is minimal or absent, and some caves are gated for part of the year.

Nearby

The Blautopf spring at Blaubeuren, Ulm and its minster, and the Danube gorge at Beuron.