#Giant's Causeway

In Irish: Clochán na bhFómharach, which means "The little stone pile of the Fomoires") is a volcanic formation located on the coast of Northern Ireland. Located 3 km north of the town of Bushmills in County Antrim, at the northern end of the Antrim plateau, it is characterized by approximately 40,000 juxtaposed vertical hexagonal columns (columns or basalt organs).
The whole, eroded by the action of the sea, evokes a paving that begins from the base of the cliff and disappears in the sea. The columns are visible on the foreshore but also in the high cliff of 28 meters, which constitutes the edge of the Antrim plateau.

Legend

According to legend, two enemy giants lived on either side of the sea, one in Scotland, called Benandonner, and the other in Ireland, named Finn Mac Cumaill. The Scottish giant spoke of his Irish rival as a neglected and cowardly person until the day when the latter, stung to the quick, told the Scotsman to come and fight to prove to him that he was the strongest! But how to cross the sea?
The Irishman threw stones into the water to build a practicable road, a "causeway" between Scotland and Ireland. But when he saw his opponent approach, the Irishman was panicked because he was much smaller than his opponent!
He ran for advice from his wife, who had just enough time to disguise him as a baby before the arrival of the Scottish giant. To the latter, she presented her "son", who was none other than her disguised husband. The Scottish giant, seeing the size of this "baby", became frightened. Dismayed at the idea of the size of the father and consequently of his power, he took his legs around his neck and returned to his lands of Scotland taking care to dismantle the pavement so that the Irishman does not risk to rejoin his island.

The site has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. It was declared a National Nature Reserve in 1987 by the Northern Ireland Department of Environment, and the site and its coastline have also integrated the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1989. The site is owned and maintained by the National Trust.

The Giant's Causeway forms a promontory which advances on the sea; it is made up of the juxtaposition of cooled lava prisms (During the Paleogene (early Cenozoic), the region of Antrim experienced an intense geological activity linked to the opening of the North of the Atlantic Ocean. magmatic, basaltic lavas forced a passage through pre-existing (Mesozoic) limestone geological layers). The largest of these prisms are nearly 12 meters high. Most have a hexagonal section, but about 30% are pentagons and some columns have four, seven, eight or even nine or ten faces. The prism section may have a flat, convex or concave surface. The ensemble evokes an old pavement with irregular paving.

Although known by the local population, the Giant's Causeway remained unknown to the general public until 1693, when Sir Richard Bulkeley, a member of Trinity College in Dublin, presented an article on this place at the Royal Society in London.

The reputation of the site became international when, in 1739, an Irish artist, Susanna Drury, made watercolors which were rewarded by the Royal Society of Dublin and were issued in the form of engravings from 17432.
In 1765, an article on the Giant's Causeway was produced in volume 12 of the encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert, illustrated by the engravings of Drury.
Tourists began to flock in the 19th century, after the opening of a tram line between Portrush and Giant's Causeway.

In the 1960s, the National Trust bought the area and upgraded it, destroying former commercial developments that distorted the site.
In 2000, a fire destroyed the Visitor Center of the site. The project for the construction of its replacement envisages a building largely underground to preserve the landscape.