Bru na Boinne: Knowth and Newgrange

Sunday, September 29, 2019
Knowth, County Meath, Ireland
The three adjacent sites of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, collectively "Bru na Boinne", some 5000 years old, are the most significant neolithic sites in Europe.  They are located near the town of Drogheda, about 40 km north of Dublin.  Slightly older than the great pyramid at Giza, admittedly not as impressive.  But, for example, the mound at Newgrange contains a funerary object, a round granite block perhaps 75 cm in diameter with a shallow bowl-like concavity, that has been in place for all those millenia and can be viewed by taking the tour.  (I don't think there are any similar objects remaining within the Egyptian monuments).  I didn't know anything about this (Frances did), so it came as a nice surprise on our last day.  The site is being developed to handle more visitors, with the visitor centre currently under renovation (Sept 2019).  
By coincidence, the site of the Battle of the Boyne, one of the most consequential battles in European history, is also just a few kilometres away.

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2025-02-16

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