Kilkenny Heritage Trails

A limestone cave the medieval annals blame for a Viking massacre in 928 AD, and a well-preserved Norman tower house that ended up as a youth hostel.

A 29-metre round tower missing only its capstone after a thousand years, and the 9th-century high cross standing beside it, carrying Daniel in the lions' den and a hunting scene side by side in stone.

A Nore-side market town dominated by a five-storey Butler tower house, from a National-rated 1842 church shared in style with Castlecomer and Freshford to a ten-arch stone bridge and a 1788 Butler house that later became a Convent of Mercy.

Two 18th-century bridges over the River Nore, a 1920s Garda station with castle-style turrets, an 1825 gated house, and a 500-year-old mill that traded grain for pottery wheels in 1976.

Westcourt Castle, birthplace in 1762 of Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers, the last stronghold to fall when Cromwellian forces took the town in 1650, two of five fortified medieval townhouses that once ringed the central crossroads, and an Augustinian friary founded in 1461 with one of Ireland's finest sedilia — 4 stops through a Kilkenny market town.

A five-arch bridge that replaced one lost to the Great Flood of 1763, a Gothic Catholic church eight years in the building, and a parish church whose rectorship a priest was once excommunicated for refusing to surrender.

A 12th-century Romanesque doorway and a worn high-cross stump anchor Freshford's village square, marking thirteen centuries of continuous religious use.

A short loop around a Barrow-side crossing village, from its rebel-era bridge to the churches and school built up around Chapel Lane in the century that followed.

A late-medieval collegiate church built to hold an earl's tomb, and the castle where that same earl died in 1405, rebuilt twice since and restored after a fire in 2010.

Duiske Abbey, largest of Ireland's medieval Cistercian churches, a seven-arch 1764 bridge over the River Barrow damaged in the 1798 Rebellion, the granite Market House where the Tithe War began in 1830, the ruined tower of St Peter's Church, and the landmark chimney of the old creamery — 5 stops through a Kilkenny river town.

A ten-arch bridge George Smith rebuilt after the Great Flood of 1763, and the church whose entrance tower is really a 16th-century tower house, built onto the site of a priory founded in 1210.

A short loop around a Georgian-planned crossroads village, where two churches built centuries apart both carry carved stone rescued from the ruined medieval priory at Fertagh.

From the vast walled "Seven Castles" of Kells Priory to the Norman motte that came before it, a Georgian glebe house built to keep the ruins in view, and the ancient round tower and high cross of Kilree a short drive away.

Kilkenny Castle, seat of the Butler family for centuries, St Canice's Cathedral with its climbable 9th-century round tower, a well-preserved Tudor merchant's house, the ruins of a 13th-century Dominican priory, an inn tied to Ireland's first witchcraft trial in 1324, and a Renaissance almshouse — 6 stops along Kilkenny's Medieval Mile.

Cross the 1910 reinforced-concrete John's Bridge onto the far bank of the Nore and follow the merchant terraces of John Street Lower — past an 18th-century schoolhouse whose pupils included Jonathan Swift — up to the ruined Augustinian priory once known as the Lantern of Ireland.

Explore the group of 9th-century sandstone high crosses marking a vanished monastery once dedicated to Ciarán of Saighir, part of the wider West Ossory cross family.

A 14th-century Carmelite friary rebuilt as a Victorian-Gothic house around a Norman keep, a ruined medieval parish church with a rare civilian double-effigy tomb, the site of the Anglo-Norman manorial centre and motte, and a cropmark concentric enclosure — 4 stops through a small Kilkenny village.

An 1869 Gothic Revival church built in the manner of J.J. McCarthy, the Presentation Sisters' 1850 convent and their disused 1875 school, the graveyard of the older chapel they replaced, and the Suir riverbank that inspired "The Rose of Mooncoin", now the Kilkenny GAA anthem.

An unfinished memorial tower begun for a son presumed dead in the Peninsular War, the Ponsonby family seat rebuilt after a Civil War fire, a Victorian church raised on a graveyard used since the 6th century, a stone bridge over the river that named the town, and a Gothic Revival Catholic church that replaced an older chapel.

Jerpoint Abbey, one of Ireland's best-preserved 12th-century Cistercian monasteries, a five-arch bridge over the River Nore, the part-medieval St Mary's Church, the ruined Grennan Castle, and a rare surviving fortified tower house on Low Street — 5 stops through a medieval Kilkenny river town.

From a National Monument church and its Tudor chapel to a ruined Grace stronghold and the home ground of a hurling legend, this walk traces Tullaroan's long span from medieval lordship to modern GAA folklore.

A town named for a 'ford of the slaughter,' a castle and mill granted to two chaplains in 1526, a deliberately planned linear layout built on a reclaimed bog, a forgotten 19th-century woollen trade, and a 1840 courthouse now lending out library books instead of handing down verdicts.

Follow the signed Windgap Village Loop past a Land War clubhouse, a village well, Europe's largest grotto, and the ruined walls of an eighteenth-century church, all within a few minutes' walk of the village lake.