Spain

Commemorative coin

2015

Cave of Altamira

(Part of the National series " UNESCO's World Natural and Cultural Heritage Sites ")

Official Journal of the European Union

The design depicts in the foreground the bison painting from the Cave of Altamira located in Cantabria. In the upper side of the image, in circular sense and with capital letters, the word ‘ESPAÑA’, at the bottom the year of issuance ‘2015’ and at the right the mint mark. The coin’s outer ring depicts the 12 stars of the European flag.

Additional information

French-Cantabrian cave art is the name given to an artistic circle of the Late Palaeolithic period, whose area of distribution lies in southern France and northern Spain. In the caves there, paintings, reliefs and drawings, especially on the walls (hence also called parietal art), were created over the course of about 20,000 years. This ice-age art is often of high artistic quality. The Stone Age cave paintings created 14,000 to 16,000 years ago in the Altamira cave near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, discovered in 1868, depict hunting game. The commemorative coin shows a bison. Since 1979, the Altamira Cave has not been open to the public, as the warm and humid air that visitors breathe has caused serious damage to the paintings.

Edge lettering

Designer