The Most Beautiful Places in Northern Ireland
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Northern Ireland are Giant's Causeway, Dark Hedges and Mussenden Temple. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Northern Ireland's most famous landscapes come from volcanic rock. Around sixty million years ago, lava flows spread across what is now County Antrim, and as some of them cooled slowly they cracked into regular columns of basalt. The Atlantic later cut this plateau into a coast of headlands, islands and cliffs, onto which later centuries placed castles, follies and estates. Geology and history sit unusually close together along the Causeway Coast.
The Giant's Causeway is the defining sight: tens of thousands of interlocking basalt columns, most of them six-sided, stepping down into the sea, explained in legend as the work of the giant Finn McCool. Nearby, Dunluce Castle stands on a sea-carved basalt crag, joined to the mainland only by a bridge across a gap in the rock, and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge spans a chasm to a small island once used by salmon fishermen.
On the cliffs above Downhill, Mussenden Temple is a small domed rotunda built in the 1780s by Frederick Hervey, the Earl Bishop of Derry, as a library modelled on Roman temples, perched on the very edge of the cliff. Inland, the Dark Hedges is an avenue of beech trees planted in the eighteenth century by the Stuart family, whose interlaced branches became famous through Game of Thrones. Basalt, ruins and planted landscape make this small region unusually rich.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Giant's Causeway | Rock formation | ✓ |
| 2 | Dark Hedges | Remarkable tree | |
| 3 | Mussenden Temple | Folly | |
| 4 | Dunluce Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 5 | Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge | Bridge |
01 Giant's Causeway
United Kingdom55.241° N 6.512° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Lindy Buckley from Nanjing, China · CC BY 2.0 Some 40,000 basalt columns step down from the cliff foot into the sea on the north coast of County Antrim, most of them six-sided, some with as few as four or as many as eight sides, the tallest about 12 metres high.
Did you know? Divers recovered gold, silver and jewellery from the Girona wreck in 1967–68, and the treasure is now displayed at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
02 Dark Hedges
United Kingdom55.134° N 6.381° W
Image by Darkmoon_Art from Pixabay Around 1775 James Stuart set out a double row of beech trees along the approach to Gracehill House, the house he had built in the north of County Antrim and named after his wife, Grace Lynd. The idea was simple estate theatre: a grand avenue to impress anyone driving up to the gate.
Did you know? The Woodland Trust warned that heavy traffic could cut the remaining lifespan of the trees to under twenty years.
03 Mussenden Temple
United Kingdom · 38.2 km from Londonderry/Derry55.168° N 6.811° W
D LN · CC BY-SA 4.0 A small domed rotunda stands alone on the lip of a basalt cliff above the Atlantic on the north coast of Northern Ireland, and it looks as if it has been set down there by mistake.
Did you know? The estate's original entrance, the Lion's Gate, was guarded by two snow leopards, the heraldic supporters of the Hervey coat of arms.
04 Dunluce Castle
United Kingdom55.211° N 6.579° W
Image by hhach from Pixabay Dunluce Castle seems to grow straight out of the rock. It stands on a basalt headland on the north coast of County Antrim, with sheer drops to the sea on several sides, joined to the mainland only by a bridge over a deep cleft.
Did you know? After the Girona wreck, the ship's cargo was sold and the proceeds were used to restore the castle.
05 Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge
United Kingdom55.240° N 6.333° W
Image by Ben_Kerckx from Pixabay Carrick-a-Rede is a short bridge doing a very old job. A rope span about 20 metres long hangs across a chasm some 30 metres above the sea, joining the cliffs of the North Antrim coast to a small rocky island whose Irish name, Carraig a' Ráid, is usually rendered as "rock of the casting".
Did you know? The last salmon was caught here in 2002, after fishing at sea and river pollution had driven the migrating stocks into decline.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Northern Ireland?
- On our list, Giant's Causeway ranks first, followed by Dark Hedges and Mussenden Temple.
- How was the Giant's Causeway formed?
- It formed about 50 to 60 million years ago when thick lava flows cooled and contracted slowly, cracking into polygonal columns of basalt much as drying mud cracks into polygons.
- What is the Dark Hedges?
- It is an avenue of beech trees on Bregagh Road in County Antrim, planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century to impress visitors approaching their Gracehill House.
- Who built Mussenden Temple?
- Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, built it in the 1780s on his Downhill estate as a summer library, inspired by the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Northern Ireland?
- In our collection, the places in Northern Ireland are most often rock formations (1), trees (1), bridges (1) and castle ruins (1).
- How many places are on this list in Northern Ireland?
- The list covers 5 places.