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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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),…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
