After leaving the center of Dublin in a rented car, we followed the excellent directions given at the car rental office (but keeping our trusty Garmin GPS turned on) to the M1 motorway, which took us almost all the way to Newgrange.
One of the most prominent passage graves in Europe, the Newgrange is a major Irish attraction and a must-see sight for the visitors to Dublin. We parked the car at the visitor center, where we enjoyed an exhibit of the excavated artifacts, a short film, and a lunch, while waiting for a bus to take us to the site of the passage grave site itself. The tourists are taken to the site in groups of approximately twenty people, with the interval of 1.5 hours between the groups.
The Newgrange tomb (built around 3200 BC) is very spectacular due to its sheer size. The passage grave is protected by the mound, or cairn, made of 200, 000 tones of loose stones. The massive structure is particularly impressive in view of the fact that its engineers and builders used neither the wheel nor metal tools.
While the exact purpose and meaning of the structure itself and that of the various spiral patterns carved into its walls remains a mystery, it is likely that the people who built Newgrange worshiped the Sun. The cairn is constructed in such a way that at dawn on 21 December, the day of the winter solstice, a beam of sunlight penetrates the roof box and travels along the 19-meter passage to the chamber.
When our tourist group arrived at the site, we had to wait outside the burial chamber for the previous group to finish their tour. The rain started pouring, and we had no place to escape it – there is absolutely no shelter at the site.
Finally, it was our turn to enter the chamber. We were told to carry our backpacks in front of us at the knee-level to avoid scratching the precious stone walls in the passage. The passage was indeed very narrow. The leather jacket that I was wearing was not very bulky, but still I could barely squeeze through in some places, even while turning my body sideways while crouching down. This is definitely not a site for people suffering from claustrophobia.
Inside, the main feature is the ceiling of the chamber, which is constructed of overlapping slabs of stone. It reaches the height of 6 meters above the floor. Photography is strictly prohibited inside the tomb.
When we emerged from the passage, the weather had magically improved, providing an opportunity to take a few photos of the exterior of the cairn and the picturesque Boyne valley.
Please follow the link to see our pictures of Newgrange.
Keyword: Newgrange.