Staigue Stone Fort is a 5th-century circular fort on the Iveragh Peninsula, not far from the small village of Sneem. Now in ruins, the Fort de Staigue is truly a large-scale, ingenious and fascinating construction… In fact, it’s one of the most popular tourist destinations… What’s more, the tour is free!
Fort de Staigue is not clearly dated, but its construction is thought to have taken place between the 4th and 5th centuries…
Apparently built for a local king, it served as a stronghold to keep watch over the surrounding area and warn of possible attackers. Its defensive structure confirms this hypothesis…
Over the centuries, the fort was finally abandoned and left in ruins… It has since been classified as a historic monument by the Irish government, and can be visited…
Fort de Staigue is located in the heart of the wilderness, on a gently rolling hill. Impossible to miss, the fort’s walls are up to 5.5 metres high and 4 metres thick. As for the size of the monument as a whole, the fort totals over 27 meters in diameter, surrounded by a deep defensive ditch.
And to add to the gigantic scale of the construction, the fort is made up of several hundred tons of stone, essential for raising the walls… Staigue Fort Stone was designed without mortar, using only a set of stones precisely placed one on top of the other to form a homogeneous construction with no risk of collapse.
These are fascinating figures, and let’s just imagine how ambitious the fort’s construction was for its time!
If you’d like to discover more, an almost 2-metre-high gate allows you to enter the enclosure and admire the ingenuity of the construction. From a neophyte’s point of view, the fort in its current state can be compared to an arena: the interior walls are stratified with ledges (akin to steps) allowing you to walk along the walls on several levels…
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