page_title: Giant's Causeway
section_title: Visitors' centre
hierarchical_section_title: Giant's Causeway / Tourism / Visitors' centre
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Obrův chodník, anglicky Giant’s Causeway, Severní Irsko. Hexagonální odlučnost bazaltů. English: Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland. Hexagonal basalts. Français&#160;: Orgues basaltiques de la Chaussée des Géants, en Irlande du Nord.
context_page_description: The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic fissure eruption. It is located in County Antrim on the north coast of Northern Ireland, about three miles northeast of the town of Bushmills.
  It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 and a national nature reserve in 1987 by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giant's Causeway was named the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are
  hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven or eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places.
  Much of the Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast World Heritage Site is owned and managed by the National Trust, and it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Northern Ireland. Access to the Giant’s Causeway is free of charge: it is not necessary to go via the visitors centre, which charges a fee.
context_section_description: The causeway was without a permanent visitors' centre between 2000 and 2012, as the previous building, built in 1986, burned down in 2000. While preliminary approval was given for a publicly funded (but privately managed) development by then Environment Minister and DUP member Arlene Foster in 2007, the public funding was frozen due to a perceived conflict-of-interest between the proposed private developer and the DUP. Ultimately, the private developer dropped a legal challenge to the publicly funded plan, and the new visitor centre was officially opened by 2012. Its construction was funded by the National Trust, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the Heritage Lottery Fund and public donations. Since opening, the new visitor centre has garnered mixed reviews from those visiting the causeway, for its pricing, design, contents and placement across the causeway walk descent. In 2018, the visitor's centre was visited by 1,011,473 people.
  There was some controversy regarding the content of some exhibits in the visitor centre, which refer to the Young Earth Creationist view of the age of the Earth. While these inclusions were welcomed by the chairman of the Northern Irish evangelical group, the Caleb Foundation, the National Trust stated that the inclusions formed only a small part of the exhibition and that the Trust "fully supports the scientific explanation for the creation of the stones 60 million years ago." An online campaign to remove creationist material was launched in 2012, and following this, the Trust carried out a review and concluded that they should be amended to have the scientific explanation on the causeway's origin as their primary emphasis. Creationist explanations are still mentioned but presented as a traditional belief of some religious communities rather than a competing explanation for the causeway's origins.
caption: Giant's Causeway at sunset
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