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Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast
| Site number: | 369 |
|
| Type of site: | Natural | |
| Date: | - | |
| Date of Inscription: | 1986 | |
| Location: | Europe, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland, County Antrim | |
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Six official UN languages:
Arabic,
Chinese,
English,
French,
Russian,
Spanish
Other languages: Catalan, Danish, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian-bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Venetian, Low German
Other languages: Catalan, Danish, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian-bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Venetian, Low German
| Description: | Northern Ireland’s Giant's Causeway is positioned at the bottom of the basalt cliffs alongside the sea coast on the rim of the Antrim plateau. It is composed of roughly 40,000 gigantic black basalt columns protruding out of the sea. The striking scene has enthused legends of giants marching over the sea to Scotland. For the last 300 years people have executed geological studies of these formations – this has greatly contributed to the development of the earth sciences, and shows that this remarkable landscape was instigated volcanic activity during the Tertiary (about 50–60 million years ago). --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. | |
| The Giant's Causeway (or Irish: Clochán na bhFómharach is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is located on the north-east coast of Northern Ireland, about 3 kilometres (2 miles) north of the town of Bushmills. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987 (by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland). In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (36 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places. The Giant's Causeway is today owned and managed by the National Trust; it is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. | ||
| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/369 | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Site Page. | |