Stamps featuring Lascaux cave art go on sale in France

La Poste confirmed that four new designs across 700,000 stamps had gone on sale from Friday April 26, at the caves’ visitor centre at the Centre International d'Art Pariétal Lascaux IV, in Montignac (Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitaine).

Each shows a colourful depiction of the prehistoric drawings, and costs €0.88 - the same as a normal “timbre vert (green stamp)”.

They will be on general sale nationwide from Monday April 29.

This is the first time in 50 years that there have been official La Poste stamps featuring designs inspired by Lascaux.

Marie Farges, La Poste director in the Dordogne region, said: “This is a great publicity coup for the site, and the department. There have not been stamps of Lascaux since 1968.”

The stamps have been deemed a success in the department already; one local La Poste Twitter account said that on the morning the stamps went on sale alone, there were 900 visitors to the temporary post office in Montignac and 6,000 stamps were sold.