UNESCO World Heritage Site – Cave of Altamira and Palaeolithic Cave Art

A bison painting from the Cave of Altamira in Cantabria; the state name 'ESPAÑA', the year '2015', and the mint mark.

Around 36,000 years ago, people in Cantabrian northern Spain began covering the walls and ceilings of a limestone cave with depictions of animals. The Cave of Altamira near Santillana del Mar is today considered one of the most important sites of Paleolithic cave art in the world. The depictions of bison, deer, and wild boar stand out for their remarkable naturalism given their age: the painters made use of the rock's uneven surface to give the figures volume and worked with various ochre tones as well as charcoal. The cave was discovered in 1868 by a local hunter, while the paintings were recognized in 1879 by the amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola — a discovery initially dismissed as a forgery and only recognized by experts decades later.

The caves of Altamira are not the only such testimony in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. In 2008, UNESCO grouped a total of 18 sites in Cantabria, Asturias, the Basque Country, and Navarre together under the title "Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain" — one of the densest concentrations of Ice Age imagery in Europe. Spain has been committed for decades to the scientific study and preservation of these sites; Altamira itself has been largely closed to the public since 2002 to protect the sensitive paintings from CO₂ and moisture. A faithful replica, the Neocueva, nonetheless makes the imagery accessible. To mark the 50th anniversary of Spain's accession to UNESCO, the country honored this heritage in 2015 with an issue from its Spanish UNESCO World Heritage series.