La grotte Chauvet : a cave under supervising

The "grotte Chauvet", located in the South of France (Ardèche dept.) was discovered in 1994 by speleologists, including Jean-Marie Chauvet, from whom come the name of the cave. After the discovery, many specialists (archaeologists, prehistorians, journalists, etc.) came to visit the cave in order to study it or to publish information and pictures. These pictures are especially remarkable and shows many new styles of paintings. However, this frequentation necessarily led to increasing the microbiological contamination, and needed specialists to carry on serious control of pollution state and evolution. The Laboratoire de recherche des monuments historiques was (and still is) in charge of these controls. The paper shows the method used and the results from the discovering of the cave, with increasing of contamination, then decreasing after setting up of several disposition aiming to limit and control bacterial and fungi development