Cork travel guide

Top 10 sights in Cork

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© Gerd Eichmann · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Blarney Castle

   A tower house built in 1446 by the MacCarthys of Muskerry on a site fortified long before. A stone set below the battlements is said to give eloquence to whoever kisses it, which is done lying on the back over a drop.

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   2© Flickr member Charlie cravero · CC BY 2.0

   Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral

   A Gothic Revival cathedral of 1879 by William Burges, with three spires and about 1,260 pieces of sculpture — Burges designed everything down to the furniture. The Resurrection Angel on the east end is gilded, and a cannonball from the 1690 siege hangs inside.

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   3© Andreas F. Borchert · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St Colman's Cathedral

   A cathedral at Cobh finished in 1919 after forty-seven years, whose spire of ninety-one metres carries the largest carillon in Ireland and Britain — forty-nine bells weighing over twelve tonnes. It looks down on the quay where the Titanic's last passengers boarded in April 1912.

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   Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne

   The Catholic cathedral of Cork and Ross at the top of Shandon Street, begun in 1808 after fire destroyed its predecessor and given its present form in the 1860s. It is known locally as the North Cathedral or the North Chapel.

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   5© Kondephy · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Spike Island

   A 42-hectare island in Cork Harbour, first a monastic settlement and then an eighteenth-century bastion fort, which held over 2,300 convicts in the famine years — the largest prison in the world at the time. It closed in 2004 and opened to visitors in 2016.

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   6© Raúl Corral · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Blackrock Castle

   A castellated fort on the Lee two kilometres from the city centre, built about 1582 against pirates and rebuilt after fire in 1827. It now houses an observatory and science centre run with Cork Institute of Technology, which tracks near-earth objects.

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   Church of St Anne

   A Church of Ireland church in Shandon built between 1722 and 1726, whose tower is faced in red sandstone on two sides and white limestone on the other two — the colours of the Cork hurling team. Its four clock faces keep slightly different time, which is why it is called the Four-Faced Liar.

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   8© Hywel Williams · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Fota Wildlife Park

   A forty-hectare wildlife park on Fota Island near Carrigtwohill, opened in 1983, where most animals are kept without cages or moats and some roam free among visitors. It has bred cheetahs successfully since 1985 and contributes to European breeding programmes.

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   9© Garry Dickinson · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Carrigrohane Castle

   A castle at Carrigrohane on a rock above the River Lee, built in the Middle Ages to command the ford there and remodelled in Gothic Revival style in the nineteenth century. It is a private house.

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    10© Richard Fensome · CC BY-SA 2.0

    Kilcrea Castle

    A ruined fifteenth-century tower house and bawn near Kilcrea Friary west of Cork, both built by Cormac Laidir MacCarthy, ninth Lord of Muskerry. The tower stands roofless in fields with its spiral stair intact.

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1. 

   1© Mike Searle · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Belvelly Castle

   A fourteenth or fifteenth-century tower house at Belvelly, guarding the narrow channel on the road to Cobh. It stood ruined for centuries and was restored as a private residence in the 2010s.

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   2© John M · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Elizabeth Fort

   A star fort off Barrack Street built in 1601 and rebuilt in the 1620s, whose guns pointed at the city rather than out to sea. It served as a barracks, a convict depot and then a police station until 2013, and is now open with a walk round the ramparts.

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   3© The Speckled Bird · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Barryscourt Castle

   A tower house near Carrigtwohill, seat of the Barry family from the twelfth century, whose present building is largely sixteenth-century with a bawn wall and gatehouse. A medieval-style herb and orchard garden has been planted inside the walls.

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   4© Guliolopez · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Camden Fort Meagher

   A coastal fort near Crosshaven guarding the harbour mouth, of which about eighty per cent is underground — one of the best-preserved concealed batteries in Europe. It was abandoned in 1989 and is maintained by volunteers.

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   5© Michael O'Sheil · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Honan Chapel

   A small chapel of 1916 on the University College Cork campus, built in Hiberno-Romanesque revival style with a mosaic floor of the zodiac. Its nineteen windows by Harry Clarke and the An Túr Gloine studio are among the finest Irish stained glass of the Arts and Crafts revival.

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   Kilcrea Friary

   A ruined Franciscan friary near Ovens, founded in 1465 by Cormac Laidir MacCarthy, who is buried in it. The Gaelic poet Art Ó Laoghaire, whose killing in 1773 produced the lament his wife composed, lies in the graveyard.

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   St. Finbarr's Cemetery

   The largest cemetery in Cork and one of the oldest still in use in Ireland, opened in 1868 on the site of an earlier burial ground. Republicans killed in the War of Independence and the Civil War, including Tomás Mac Curtain, are buried here.

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   8© HarryLande · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Red Abbey

   The bell tower of a fourteenth-century Augustinian abbey, named for the red sandstone it is built of, and the only substantial medieval structure left standing in the city centre. It was used as a gun platform during the 1690 siege.

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   9© Marcus Meissner · CC BY 2.0

   Holy Trinity Church, Cork

   A Gothic Revival church and friary on the quay named after Father Theobald Mathew, the Capuchin who led the nineteenth-century temperance movement and took millions of pledges. He laid its first stone in 1832 and it is known as the Temperance church.

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    10© The Speckled Bird · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Crawford Art Gallery

    A public gallery in the eighteenth-century customs house, designated a national cultural institution in 2006, holding Irish art from the eighteenth century onward. Its Canova casts, sent from Rome in 1818, are the collection the school of art was founded around.

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