Scenic Place in County Sligo

Knocknarea is a flat-topped limestone mountain rising above the Cúil Irra Peninsula southwest of Sligo town, its summit crowned by the vast cairn of Medb's Cairn, a Neolithic passage tomb mound of approximately 40,000 tonnes of stone that is one of the largest prehistoric monuments in Ireland and is traditionally identified as the grave of the mythological Queen Maeve of Connacht. The combination of the mountain's distinctive profile visible from a wide area of Sligo and the extraordinary scale of the cairn on its summit creates one of the most powerful prehistoric landscape monuments in the west of Ireland. The cairn on the summit, measuring approximately 55 metres in diameter and 10 metres high, has never been excavated and is believed to contain a passage tomb of the Neolithic period beneath the stone mound. Whether or not the mythological identification with Queen Maeve is historical, the scale of the cairn demonstrates the enormous investment of labour and resources that the community who built it was prepared to make, and its continued status as one of the most visible landmarks in the Sligo landscape reflects the sustained importance of this monument across five thousand years. The ascent of Knocknarea from Strandhill or Grange provides excellent views of the surrounding Sligo landscape, the Benbulben plateau to the northeast, the Atlantic coast and the Carrowmore megalithic cemetery on the plain below visible in a panorama that encompasses the most remarkable prehistoric landscape in the west of Ireland.

Inishmurray is an uninhabited island off the Sligo coast that contains one of the most remarkably preserved early Christian monastic sites in Ireland, a cashel enclosure protecting the remains of several churches, beehive cells, pillar stones and a cursing stone tradition of considerable antiquity in a state of preservation quite extraordinary for a site that has not been managed or significantly excavated since its abandonment in the twentieth century. The island is accessible by charter boat from Mullaghmore and the visit provides one of the finest and most authentic early Christian heritage experiences available in the west of Ireland. The monastic cashel at Inishmurray encloses several distinct ecclesiastical buildings including the remains of three churches, a women's church and the men's church of the main enclosure, beehive cells that provided accommodation for the monks and a remarkable collection of cursing stones, smooth rounded pebbles used in a specific ritual of imprecation that could be invoked against enemies by turning the stones in a particular direction while uttering specific prayers. The cursing stone tradition is unique to Inishmurray among Irish monastic sites and its persistence to the modern era, long after any formal religious observance had disappeared from the island, demonstrates the tenacity of folk religious practice. The island was permanently inhabited until 1948 when the last residents were evacuated to the mainland, and the remains of the twentieth-century settlement add a more recent layer of human habitation to the island's extraordinary archaeological landscape.