At dawn on the winter solstice, when the light breaks over the horizon, a beam of light channels through a box above the entry to the prehistoric tomb of Newgrange. Moving inward little by little down a narrow passageway, it reaches the heart of the chamber.

This 17 minute-long yearly event is a distillation of so many secular and religious holidays around the time of the winter solstice that celebrate the return of light, the rebirth of the sun.

Newgrange is part of an 5200 year old archeological site called Brú na Bóinne in eastern Ireland.

With limited public transportation options, I reached Brú na Bóinne as part of a guided tour from Dublin. Our tour of the area began in the Brú na Bóinne visitor center, a museum I’d highly recommend despite its terrifying proximity to male cleaners.

The tour of Brú na Bóinne also brought us to Knowth, which has a large passage tomb (and stairs so you can walk across it) with many smaller satellite tombs. These tomb mounds, like Newgrange, have interior passageways, but they are oriented to the spring and fall equinoxes, not the winter solstice.

This pillar outside the entrance to the large mound casts a shadow-line directly over the entry during the equinoxes.

The ceiling of the tombs are resting on large carved kerbstones, with small white quartz rocks scattered in front.

You can see the marks of the tool used to chisel the designs into the tombs.

This is the calendar stone, showing the cycles of the moon.

This one’s a sundial.

In addition to the astronomical stones, many other stones were covered with with squiggles and dots and spirals. Some people in our group wanted to know what these designs meant, and though I am not an archeologist, I already knew the answer—they’re art.

Now lets go back to the Newgrange site. See the designs on this kerbstone? That’s art too.

Back to the entry of the Newgrange tomb; art! art! art!

You know what’s even cooler than looking at 5200 year old archeological site? Going inside it! We split up into two groups and went all the way into the central interior, to a large carved basin where cremated remains were placed. The basin is so large it had to have been created before the tomb, which was build around it.

Here’s the thing—the interior of the Newgrange tomb has never been restored. So when I was looking up into the corbelled, overlapping slate of the central ceiling, that ceiling is older than the pyramids, perfectly constructed without mortar (it doesn’t even leak in the rain). Then you have to consider that the materials were moved to the site from as far as 80 kilometers away. 

Finally, the pathway inside the tomb itself slopes up in just the right way to capture the solstice morning light and guide it through the entry box to hit the center of tomb. Our guide told us there’s a yearly lottery to experience the solstice at Newgrange, and that one year she was chosen. She described the solstice light as material and alive and that everyone was reaching out to touch it.

This solstice morning you’ll find me at the beach next to my apartment, waiting for the first sunbeam to come over the horizon, feeling cold, and maybe a little awestruck. I might try to touch the light myself before I catch the bus into work.

How I got to Newgrange: tour from Dublin

Where I slept: Wynn’s Hotel.  Price: €178 for a single. Recommended: yes.