Knocknarea & Queen Maeve's Cairn

Knocknarea (Cnoc na Ría) is a flat-topped limestone hill rising 327 metres above the Cúil Irra Peninsula west of Sligo town. The summit is dominated by Miosgán Médhbha — Queen Maeve's Cairn — an enormous Neolithic passage tomb mound measuring 55 metres in diameter and 10 metres high. The cairn is one of the largest unexcavated megalithic monuments in Ireland; its contents are unknown because it has never been archaeologically opened. Local tradition identifies it as the burial mound of the legendary Queen Maeve of Connacht.

The cairn is visible as a prominent bump on the skyline from Sligo town, from Strandhill beach below, and from as far away as Rosses Point and Benbulben across the bay. W.B. Yeats wrote about Knocknarea and Maeve frequently; the hill and the cairn are part of the mythological landscape of the Sligo countryside that shaped his poetry. The ascent takes approximately 45 minutes from the main car park at Primrose Grange; the path is well marked and straightforward but requires proper footwear.

From the summit the view extends north over Sligo Bay and the Atlantic toward Donegal, east to Benbulben and the Dartry Mountains, south over the drumlin country of south Sligo and west to the Mayo coastline. Strandhill village and beach are directly below — the combination of a beach morning and a Knocknarea ascent is a standard Sligo day. Please don't add stones to the cairn — existing tradition encourages this but the monument is being damaged by the accumulation of hundreds of thousands of visitor stones and archaeologists have requested that visitors stop.