Kilkenny City
Ireland's second-largest medieval cathedral (after St Patrick's in Dublin) has a long and fascinating history. The first monastery was built here in the…
Must-see attractions in Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Kilkenny City
Rising above the River Nore, Kilkenny Castle is one of Ireland's most visited heritage sites. Stronghold of the powerful Butler family, it has a history…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
This fortified Augustinian monastery is the best sort of ruin, where you can amble around whenever you like, with no tour guides, set hours or fees. Most…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
One of Ireland's most magnificent landscaped gardens, Altamont covers 16 hectares on the banks of the River Slaney. Carefully selected plantings are…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
One of Ireland’s finest Cistercian ruins, Jerpoint Abbey was established in the 12th century, with the tower and cloister dating from the late 14th or…
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Kilkenny City
Dating from the early 13th century, St Mary's Church has been converted into a fascinating modern museum that charts the history of Kilkenny in medieval…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
This important monastic site, founded in the 7th century by St Moling, was the burial place of the Kings of Leinster. Its remains include four church…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Dunmore Cave is as famous for its history as for its beautiful calcite formations, and has yielded many archaeological treasures. Admission is via a…
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Kilkenny City
Dating from 1594, this is Ireland's finest example of a Tudor merchant's house, complete with a restored medieval garden. Built around a series of…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
The core of Huntington Castle is a spooky, dusty old tower house built in 1625 by Sir Laurence Esmonde, now surrounded by Georgian terraces and…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
The grounds of the former Wandesforde estate, whose owners grew rich from exploitation of the land's underlying coal deposits, now form a family-oriented…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Water from Ballykeefe's 80m-deep limestone aquifer is used to make whiskey, gin, vodka and poitín at this rural distillery, whose farm grows its own…
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National Design & Craft Gallery
Kilkenny City
Contemporary Irish crafts are showcased at the imaginative National Design & Craft Gallery, set in former stables across the road from Kilkenny Castle,…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Jerpoint Park is a working farm on the site of a 12th-century medieval town, where 35-minute guided tours (10.30am and 2.30pm) use cutting-edge…
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Kilkenny City
Until its closure, Smithwick's was Ireland’s oldest working brewery. John Smithwick founded the business in 1710 on the site of Kilkenny's 13th-century St…
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Kilree Round Tower & High Cross
Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Signposted across the road from the Kells Priory car park, 2.5km south of Kells, are a 29m-high round tower, an ancient church and a Celtic high cross,…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Dominated by the jackdaw-haunted ruins of a Gothic fantasy of a country house, the former seat of the Duckett family (the house burned down in 1933) was…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Thickly wooded Woodstock Gardens is a beauty of a park with huge landscaped terraces, a walled garden, an arboretum (including two 40m-tall redwoods),…
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Kilkenny City
Founded in 1225 by William Marshal, this Dominican abbey takes its name from the monks' black habits. Much of what survives dates from the 18th and 19th…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
This impressive Tudor Gothic mansion, the ancestral home of the McMorrough Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster, was modelled in 1810–20 around the earlier…
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Kilkenny City
The Butler Gallery is one of the country’s most important art galleries outside Dublin. Small exhibitions featuring the work of contemporary artists are…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Founded in 1204, this was once Ireland's largest Cistercian abbey, and is still very much a working parish church. In the grounds stand two Celtic high…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Housed in an atmospheric former convent with original stained-glass windows, this thoroughly engaging museum focuses on the lives of local people through…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
These 16 interconnecting, themed gardens span the five senses – from a sculpture garden to a formal rose garden, a water and woodland garden, a willow…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Built in the 13th century on the site of a former monastery, St Mary's is ruined today but the well-preserved remains include its tower, which can be…
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Visual Centre for Contemporary Art
Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
British architect Terry Pawson was behind the factory-inspired industrial design of this concrete, steel-and-glass cultural centre, which is a…
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Kilkenny City
The beautiful Butler House gardens are home to an unusual water feature constructed from remnants of the British-built Nelson's Pillar, blown up by…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
About 3km north of Thomastown, east of the R448, is a small, ruined 13th-century church and Norman tower, signposted 50m off the road. The church contains…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Built by William Marshal on the site of an earlier Norman motte-and-bailey fort, this 13-century castle survived Cromwell's attentions. Much of the…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
These delightful gardens are home to a heady cocktail of medicinal and kitchen herbs growing in orderly profusion; the recreated medieval monastic herb…
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Kilkenny City
Kilkenny's Tholsel (City Hall) was built in 1761 on the spot where Dame Alice Kyteler’s maid Petronella was burned at the stake in 1324 for witchcraft …
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
One of the tallest round towers in Ireland once dominated this former monastery, but it was destroyed early in the 18th century by a farmer worried that…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
At this 73-hectare farm, children can pet goats, cuddle rabbits, feed lambs, turkeys and ducks, navigate a maze (in the former barn), play crazy golf and…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
This elegant Regency Gothic cathedral dating from 1833 was the brainchild of Bishop James Doyle, a staunch supporter of Catholic emancipation. On the…
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Kilkenny City
These 21 hectares of public parkland extend to the southeast of Kilkenny Castle, framing a fine view of Mt Leinster, while a Celtic-cross-shaped rose…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
This brewery produces the popular O'Hara's brand beers. Its award-winning Irish Stout bursts with flavour and certainly holds its own against that other…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
The nationally renowned Jerpoint Glass Studio is housed in an old stone-walled farm building, where you can watch workers craft molten glass into…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
Goatsbridge trout is sold across Ireland and beyond, and here you can visit the source. Guided one-hour tours of the fish farm show you the ponds and…
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Kilkenny City
This is the only gate from the old Norman city walls still standing, albeit with the help of metal bracing these days. Crumbling sections of the old walls…
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Counties Wexford, Waterford, Carlow & Kilkenny
The former Church of Ireland in the heart of the St Mullins monastic site houses an exhibition on the life of St Moling, and on the history of the…
