Fingal's Cave

Fingal's Cave is a sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns of the same Paleogene lava flow that produced the Giant's Causeway across the North Channel. Its interior is a natural cathedral-like chamber roughly 20 meters high and 75 meters deep, carved by wave action along the jointed rock, and its Gaelic name, Uamh-Binn, means "cave of melody," describing the sound of waves echoing off the columned walls. The cave inspired Felix Mendelssohn's overture "The Hebrides," and it shares its formation with the Giant's Causeway as evidence that the two sites were once part of the same continuous lava field before the widening of the Atlantic Ocean separated them.