Bétharram Caves: a family heritage

This September 10, 2025, Ghislain Ross, 38 years old, welcomes us with a warm smile. Director of the Bétharram caves, he is above all the heir to a family adventure that began in 1903. “My great-great-grandfather, Léon Ross, was a painter of Saint-Malo origin, who fell in love with the Pyrenees. He wanted to share the hidden beauty of this natural site,” he says.

Discovered in 1819 by one of Napoleon’s grunts, the caves were explored in 1836 by three members of the Pau Alpine Club. Visionary, Léon Ross acquired them and built a hydroelectric power station to light them, with the ambition of opening them to the general public. A bold bet for its time.

The family home is always located near the caves, Ghislain Ross grew up with them. “My mother worried that I would get lost in the galleries. For the child that I was, it was a playground, but also a sacred place. Today, he is the fifth generation to watch over this underground treasure. It perpetuates the traditions: for more than seventy years, the guides have worn a green uniform, with the embroidered crest of the Bétharram caves, and the Bigourdan beret.

“We touch on something bigger than ourselves”

It’s time for us to embark with Ghislain Ross on a journey to the bowels of the Earth, unique in its kind. In the departure hall, a model allows us to visualize the route that awaits us. The 2.8 kilometer circuit alternates between walking and boat navigation on an underground river and ends with a journey on a small train, before returning to the surface after crossing an entire mountain.

You have to go down 300 steps to arrive in an 80 meter chasm. There, in the unchanging coolness – 13°C – a silent and mineral universe opens up, populated by limestone concretions, stalactites and stalagmites. So many natural monuments illuminated like works of art made by nature alone, in this never-inhabited place. “The lighting was designed like a paintbrush. She reveals the shapes: a bell, an elephant, a face, sculpted by the water which shapes, polishes, hollows… She is the artist,” confides Ghislain Ross, before adding moved: “Here, a magic happens: we touch something bigger than ourselves.”

Nearly 180,000 visits per year

Every year, nearly 180,000 visitors share this immersive experience. The tourist posters of the past praising the Bétharram caves were inspired by Jules Verne and his Journey to the center of the Earth. Since its publication in 1864, the work has nourished the collective imagination.

Today, when the rain falls or the heatwave hits the Pyrenees, the Bétharram caves offer a haven of freshness, but above all of silence and contemplation. Because, by wandering through these deep galleries, where water has traced its path since the dawn of time, man rediscovers the essential: the sense of his fragility and the beauty of a grandiose natural site that the Ross family has given itself the mission of transmitting.