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Round towers such as this one at Killala are a distinctly Irish medieval form of ecclesiastical architecture (Route 2, Stage 4)

The later Christian architecture of Ireland is also impressive. Muckross Abbey, County Kerry, and Ross Errilly Friary, County Galway, remain as particularly fine monastic ruins.

A fortification to look for from an earlier period is the crannog. These lake island fortifications date from the Iron Age through to medieval times. There are particularly good examples at Kiltooris Lough (Route 1, Stage 8) and on Achill Island (Route 2, Stage 6).

Fast-forwarding to the 18th century, Ireland has more than its fair share of grand houses. Bantry House in County Cork dates from this period. There is also some fine 19th-century Gothic Revival architecture in Ireland.

At a more prosaic level, although the traditional whitewashed thatched Irish cottage is slowly succumbing to modernisation, some good examples still survive, particularly in Donegal.

Culture

Literature

Ireland has a great tradition of Gaelic literature, much of it hailing from the Atlantic coast. Good translations are, however, hard to find. You could try Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s 1949 novel Cré na Cille which has new translations as Graveyard Clay and The Dirty Dust. For poetry, try Máirtín Ó Direáin’s Tacar Danta/Selected Poems. Perhaps more accessible is the Irish contribution to literature in English. The island has produced four Nobel Laureates for literature: William Butler Yeats – who had strong ties with the Sligo area, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Another great of Irish literature with ties to the Atlantic coast is John Millington Synge whose one-act play Riders to the Sea, set in the Aran Islands, was first performed in 1904. For a more contemporary perspective, the trials and tribulations of life in Ireland since the financial downturn of 2008 have sparked a revival in novels and short stories. Writers such as Sarah Baume, Kevin Barry and their contemporaries are an effective antidote to any over-romantic view of life in Ireland.