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Grotte de Tourtoirac
The Tourtoirac cave, in the Dordogne, was discovered in January 1995 by a villager, the caver Jean-Luc Sirieix, who dived into a resurgence of the Clautre. Developed for the public, it has been open to visits since 2010.
You discover a great diversity of concretions: columns, draperies, eccentrics and soda straws, highlighted by plays of shadow and light.
The village of Tourtoirac, in the north of the Dordogne, is also worth a visit. It keeps traces of a prehistoric past and of an abbey. It is above all linked to the story of Antoine de Tounens, a Périgord lawyer born at Chourgnac, who had himself crowned king of Araucanía and Patagonia in the nineteenth century. He is buried in the Tourtoirac cemetery, where the tomb of his successor Achille I also lies, and a museum is devoted to this story in the village.
