merrion street

Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar and Tourism Ireland today announced that the Pyramids of Giza and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro are among world landmarks that will "go green" to mark St Patrick's day this year.

This is the fourth year of Tourism Ireland's "Greening Initiative".

Other newcomers going green for the first time include the famous ‘Welcome’ sign in Las Vegas, the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, HMS Belfast in London, City Hall in Houston, Texas, the Citadel in Jordan, the Tower of Hercules (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Galicia in Spain), the futuristic new EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, the International School in Bonn and the Allianz Arena in Munich (home ground of FC Bayern Munich).

The new sites will join some ‘old favourites’ which have gone green in previous years on 17 March – including the Sydney Opera House, Niagara Falls, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, Burj al Arab in Dubai, Table Mountain in South Africa, the Empire State Building in New York, Burg Theater (City Hall) in Vienna, the Sky Tower in New Zealand and the TV tower in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz.

Minister Varadkar said:

This is a major coup for Irish tourism...We’ll be using every opportunity to send out the message that Ireland is the place to visit in 2013, including through the visit of major global media outlets to Dublin on 17 March.

CEO of Tourism Ireland Niall Gibbons said:

People across the world instantly identify St Patrick’s Day with the island of Ireland and that heightened profile allows us to put the Ireland holiday experience in the spotlight – from Sydney to London and Stockholm to Las Vegas. Our St Patrick’s programme will span Great Britain, Mainland Europe, North America, Australia, as well as developing markets such as China, India and South Africa. There will be saturation coverage of the island of Ireland across the airwaves, in newspapers and digital media – and that’s an invaluable boost for our overall tourism marketing drive this year.