The prehistoric caves on the border
At the western end of Liguria, at Grimaldi, just a few metres from the French border and the town of Menton, a wall of red limestone cliffs plunges into the sea: the Balzi Rossi, the "Red Cliffs", named for the colour of the rock. In these cliffs open about fifteen caves and rock shelters which, for tens of thousands of years, were inhabited by prehistoric humans, first Neanderthals and then modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic, who found here shelter, a mild climate and abundant food between the sea and the mountains. From the nineteenth century, excavations brought to light one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe.
The caves preserved burials of exceptional importance: among them, the "Triple Burial" of the Barma Grande cave, with a man, a young woman and a boy buried together with ornaments of shells, teeth and bones, and the "Lady of Caviglione", adorned with a cap of shells. Here were also found the famous Venuses of the Balzi Rossi, small female figurines carved in stone and bone, about 20,000 to 25,000 years old, symbols of fertility, today partly in museums in France. The Museo Preistorico dei Balzi Rossi, founded in 1898 thanks to Thomas Hanbury and renovated, displays tools, ornaments, animal bones of species now extinct, such as elephants, hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses, and the casts of the burials. A path along the cliff allows you to visit some of the caves. Below the cliffs, a small pebble beach offers a place to swim.
Tip: combine the Balzi Rossi with the nearby Hanbury Gardens; check the opening days of the museum and the archaeological area.
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