The Rock of Gibraltar (sometimes by its original Latin name, Calpe, or from its later Arabic name: جبل طارق, or Jabal Tariq ("Mount of Tariq"); in Spanish: Peñón de Gibraltar) is a monolithic limestone promontory located in Gibraltar, off the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. It is 426 m (1,398 ft) high. The Rock is Crown property of the United Kingdom, and borders Spain. The sovereignty of Gibraltar was transferred from Spain to the Kingdom of Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 after the War of the Spanish Succession. In 2002, the United Kingdom and Spain were working on "ending the centuries-old dispute over the rock." Most of the Rock's upper area is covered by a nature reserve, which is home to around 250 Barbary macaques. These macaques, as well as a labyrinthine network of tunnels, attract a large number of tourists each year.
The Rock of Gibraltar was one of the Pillars of Hercules and was known to the Romans as Mons Calpe, the other pillar being Mons Abyla or Jebel Musa on the African side of the Strait. In ancient times the two points marked the limit to the known world, a myth originally fostered by the Phoenicians.
Read more about Rock Of Gibraltar: Geology
Famous quotes containing the word rock:
“You have constantly urged the idea that you were persecuted because you did not come from West-Point, and you repeat it in these letters. This, my dear general, is I fear, the rock on which you have split.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)