Insights

St. Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny preserves one of Ireland’s most evocative medieval memorials: the stone effigy of a warrior associated with the Norman…

Ballintubber Abbey stands in County Mayo as one of Ireland’s most evocative medieval religious sites. Its long connection with the O’Conor dynasty, its…

In a coastal cemetery, an anchor can appear at first to be a straightforward emblem of the sea. It may mark the grave of a sailor, harbour worker, shipbuilder,…

In the quiet county of Roscommon, tucked behind the walls of Strokestown Park, stands one of the most unusual funerary monuments on the island of Ireland. The…

Nestled in the rocky limestone pastures of south Galway, Kilmacduagh Abbey rises out of a hollow that has felt human footsteps for well over a thousand years.…

On a bend of the River Boyne in County Meath, a vast stone monument preserves one of Europe’s most remarkable prehistoric achievements. Newgrange is a passage…

The Magdalene Laundries were Catholic-run institutions in Ireland where so-called fallen women were confined, often against their will, from the late 18th…

Tucked into a glacial valley in County Wicklow, Glendalough reads like a passage from another century. Reedy lakes mirror grey stone walls, deer move through…

Dublin in the early nineteenth century was a city crammed with graves. The old churchyards within the medieval walls had been in continuous use for centuries,…

The carved harp is one of the most recognisable motifs on Irish headstones, a symbol so deeply woven into the island's artistic identity that it continues to…