The Mini Rough Guide to Ireland (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Ireland
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2022-03-14T04:57:54+00:00

Castlebar, a quiet partly Georgian town, is the county town of Mayo. To the east, in Turlough, The National Museum of Country Life # [map] (Tue, Wed, Thurs, Fri & Sat 10am–5pm, Sun & Mon 1–5pm; free; www.museum.ie) houses the National Folklife Collection, a series of hugely entertaining displays illustrating rural life in Ireland from 1850 to about 1950.

Inland, the village of Knock (from the Irish Cnoc Mhuire – ‘Mary’s Hill’) is a respected place of pilgrimage. In 1879 the townspeople saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John on a south gable of the old parish church. In the centenary year of 1979, pilgrim Pope John Paul II came from Rome to address an open-air mass at Knock with over 400,000 of the faithful. Knock still caters to the pilgrims, with souvenir shops and a museum of folklore and handicrafts. The site of the famous apparition has been enclosed in glass, and statues recreate the position of the figures in the vision.

In Foxford, the old woollen mill houses an interpretative centre that tells the story of the famine in the area, while near Ballycastle, on the north Mayo cliffs, the pyramid-shaped heritage centre of Céide Fields (Mar–Sept daily 10am–6pm, Nov daily 10am–4.30; www.heritageireland.ie) uncovers the site of one of the area’s many prehistoric settlements. The site, dating back to 3000 BC, is estimated to be the single largest Stone Age monument in existence in the world today.

Shamrock Curtain

Travelling in the west of Ireland you may cross the Shamrock Curtain, an important cultural frontier. Signs are printed in Gaelic letters and the people speak Irish as a first language. This is the Gaeltacht. Its residents strive to maintain Irish as a living language. The Dublin government actively supports Gaeltacht efforts to keep the old language and culture alive. Courses in Irish offered here every summer are a rite of passage for Irish teenagers.

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