5 Days in Galway

Every walk in Galway starts at Eyre Square, the green in the middle of town, officially named John F. Kennedy Memorial Park after the American president spoke here in June 1963, a few months before he was killed. On the west side stands the Browne Doorway, the stone doorway and window of a merchant's house from 1627, moved here in 1905 when the house was pulled down. It's carved with the arms of the Browne and Lynch families, two of the fourteen Tribes, and is a good introduction to who ran this town. Nearby sits a statue of Pádraic Ó Conaire, the Galway writer who helped revive literature in Irish, a copy of the 1935 original that's now in the city museum.

From the square, walk down William Street into Shop Street, the pedestrian heart of the old town and the best stage in Ireland for buskers: fiddlers, singers, living statues and the odd full band. At the corner of Abbeygate Street is Lynch's Castle, the best of the merchant town houses, built around 1500 by the Lynches, the most powerful of the Tribes, who gave the city most of its mayors. Look up for the carved coats of arms and the gargoyles. It's a bank now, and you can walk in during opening hours.

The Tribes of Galway were Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D'Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris and Skerritt, mostly Anglo-Norman families who ran the city like a small merchant republic. "Tribes" was an insult from Cromwell's soldiers, and Galway took it on as a badge of honor. You'll see their names on the roundabouts.

St Nicholas' was founded in 1320, and it's the largest medieval parish church in Ireland still in use, today Church of Ireland (Anglican). Inside are the tombs and carved arms of the merchant families, many of them defaced, it's said, by Cromwell's troops, who stabled their horses here. Christopher Columbus is said to have prayed here on a voyage to Iceland in 1477. There's no proof, but it's not impossible, and Galway is fond of the story.

On Market Street, behind the church, an old window and plaque set into the wall in 1854 tell Galway's most famous legend: in 1493, they say, the mayor James Lynch FitzStephen hanged his own son for murdering a young Spanish visitor, and that's where the word "lynching" comes from. No record from the time mentions it, the first written account is from almost two centuries later, and the word almost certainly comes from 18th-century Virginia. It's a story, not history.

Walk down High Street into Quay Street, the busiest and most colorful street in town, full of pubs, restaurants and music. Have lunch at McDonagh's, a fish shop and restaurant that has been in the same family since 1902: a bowl of seafood chowder with brown soda bread, or fish and chips with the catch of the day. It's busy, simple and exactly right.

On the way down, turn into Druid Lane for the Hall of the Red Earl: under a glass roof are the foundations of the hall the de Burgo family built in the 13th century to collect taxes and hold feasts, the oldest remains in the city. It's free and open on weekdays. At the bottom of Quay Street, Tigh Neachtain, the blue-painted corner pub, is the best place in town to sit with a coffee or a pint and watch Galway go by.

At the river mouth, the Galway City Museum is small, free and worth an hour. It tells the city's story from the Normans to the War of Independence, and its centerpiece is a full-size Galway hooker, the traditional wooden sailing boat of this coast with its rust-red sails, which used to carry turf from Connemara to the city.

Next to it is the Spanish Arch, a stretch of the city wall that was extended in 1584 to protect the quays where ships unloaded. The arches themselves were probably opened in the 18th century, and the "Spanish" name came later still: Spanish ships did trade here, but there's no known link with this wall, which was partly wrecked by the tsunami from the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Walk through it to the river, where the grass on a sunny evening fills up with students, and look across the water to the Long Walk, the row of colored houses on the cover of every Galway postcard.

Traditional music is the soul of Galway's pubs, and the best place to start is Tig Chóilí, a small, crowded pub on Mainguard Street where musicians gather around a table every evening. It isn't a show: they play for each other, reels and jigs and the odd song, and you listen, with a pint. Taaffes, a minute away on Shop Street, is the other classic, with sessions early in the evening and later at night.

The great green dome over the river belongs to Galway Cathedral, dedicated in 1965 and one of the last big stone cathedrals built in Europe. It stands on the site of the old city jail, and its mix of styles, Renaissance dome, Spanish-looking towers and Irish stone, makes locals call it everything from majestic to the Taj Micheál.

Inside, it's dark, solid and impressive, with Connemara marble floors and rose windows. Look for the mosaic in the side chapel: among the figures around the risen Christ are Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 Rising, and John F. Kennedy, which is about as Irish as a church can get.

From the cathedral steps, the Salmon Weir Bridge crosses the River Corrib, the short, fast river that carries the water of Lough Corrib to the sea. From spring to midsummer you can look down and see salmon waiting in the clear water below the weir, on their way upriver to spawn.

A few minutes' walk upstream is the University of Galway, founded in 1845, and its quadrangle, finished in 1849 in limestone Tudor Gothic and modeled on Christ Church in Oxford. Walk through the arch into the quad: it's the prettiest corner of the city, and quiet.

Walk south along the west bank of the river, towards the sea, to the Claddagh, the old fishing village just outside the city walls. For centuries it was a community apart, Irish-speaking, with its own customs and its own elected king who settled disputes and led the fishing fleet. The thatched cottages were cleared in the 1930s for council houses, but the name lives on in the Claddagh ring: two hands holding a crowned heart, for friendship, loyalty and love. The story goes that Richard Joyce, a Claddagh man captured by Algerian pirates in the late 1600s, learned goldsmithing as a slave and brought the design home. Worn on the right hand with the heart facing out, you're single; on the left hand with the heart towards you, you're married.

At the Claddagh Basin, swans gather in dozens, and from Nimmo's Pier you get the classic view back across the river to the Long Walk and the Spanish Arch. Thomas Dillon's on Quay Street, which claims to have been making the rings since 1750, has a small free display of old ones.

From the Claddagh, follow the shore west along the promenade to Salthill, Galway's old-fashioned seaside resort, with Galway Bay on one side and the hills of the Burren across the water. The walk is about 3 km, and at the far end, by the Blackrock diving tower, the whole city has one ritual: you kick the wall at the end of the prom before turning back. Nobody knows why, and nobody skips it.

Locals swim off Blackrock all year round, jumping from the tower at high tide. If the weather turns, the Galway Atlantaquaria, the national aquarium, is on the prom. On the way out, the causeway to the lighthouse on Mutton Island, from South Park by the Claddagh, is a short detour into the bay.

Poitín (pronounced potcheen) is the Irish moonshine, a clear spirit distilled from grain or potatoes in secret stills in the hills of Connemara for centuries, and banned for most of them. Micil Distillery, in the back of the Oslo bar in Salthill, was the first legal distillery in Galway in more than a hundred years, and it makes poitín from a family recipe from the 1840s, along with gin and whiskey. Book a tasting, then have a pint of Galway Bay Brewery beer in the Oslo bar in front.

Take the bus or walk back towards the city to the Crane Bar on Sea Road, in the West End, the neighborhood across the river from the Latin Quarter where locals go out. There's music every night on both floors: an informal trad session in the bar downstairs, and upstairs, in a small room, a booked act from about 9:30pm. It's one of the most respected music pubs in the west of Ireland.

Afterwards, Dominick Street and the West End are full of good pubs and late bars. The Róisín Dubh is the place for live bands and comedy.

The road south follows the shore of Galway Bay to Kinvara, a small harbor village where the Galway hookers come for a boat festival every August. On a rock at the water's edge stands Dunguaire Castle, a 16th-century tower house that is one of the most photographed castles in Ireland. It has been closed to visitors since 2023, but the view from the shore is the point anyway.

After Ballyvaughan, the land turns gray. The Burren is a plateau of bare limestone, cracked into slabs and crevices, so empty that one of Cromwell's officers complained it had "not water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him". Look closer and the cracks are full of flowers: Arctic, alpine and Mediterranean plants grow side by side here, and in May and June the whole place is in bloom.

In the middle of it stands Poulnabrone, a portal tomb of huge stone slabs built more than 5,000 years ago. When it was excavated in the 1980s, the remains of around 30 people, adults and children, buried between about 3800 and 3200 BC, were found under it.

Doolin is a scattering of houses near the sea that became famous in the 1970s as the capital of traditional music, and it still plays the part: there's a session in at least one of its three pubs, Gus O'Connor's, McGann's and McDermott's, every night of the year, and in summer often from the afternoon too. Stop for a bowl of chowder or a plate of Irish stew. Outside summer the pubs are quiet at lunchtime, and the music starts in the evening. It's also where the ferries leave for the Aran Islands in summer.

The cliffs rise straight out of the Atlantic, more than 200 meters at their highest, and run for about 14 km along the coast of Clare. On a clear day you can see the Aran Islands, Galway Bay and the mountains of Connemara. O'Brien's Tower, on the highest point, was built in 1835 by a local landlord, Cornelius O'Brien, for visitors who already came to stare in the 19th century.

The visitor center is built into the hillside so you barely see it. Walk north past the tower or south along the path towards Hag's Head, and within ten minutes most of the crowd is behind you. Puffins nest on the cliffs from April to July.

The ferry lands at Kilronan, the island's only real village. At the pier you'll find bike rental huts, minibus drivers offering island tours and pony traps. Take a bike: the island is 14 km long, there are almost no cars, and riding along the narrow road between thousands of dry-stone walls, with the sea on both sides, is the best part of the day. The walls were built by clearing the stones from the fields, and the soil itself was made by hand, from sand and seaweed.

Cycle about 7 km west to Kilmurvey and walk up to Dún Aonghasa, a huge stone fort built in rings on the very edge of a sheer cliff almost 90 meters high. The oldest parts go back to the Bronze Age, around 1100 BC, and nobody really knows who built it or why. Around the walls is a band of sharp stones set on end to stop attackers, and on the seaward side there's no wall at all, just the drop to the Atlantic.

Lie on your stomach at the edge and look over, if you dare. There's no fence.

Back down the hill, Kilmurvey has a small white-sand beach with clear, very cold water, sheltered enough for a quick swim in summer. If you have the energy, ride on to the ruins of the Seven Churches, a medieval monastic site with old graves and crosses (there were never actually seven churches), or follow the coast path to the Worm Hole, a perfectly rectangular natural pool in the rocks where the Red Bull cliff diving series has come several times. It's about an hour's walk there and back over rough limestone, so with the last ferry at 5pm, choose one or the other.

Before the last ferry, ride back to Kilronan for a bowl of seafood chowder and a pint at Joe Watty's, the island's favorite pub, where there's often music in the evening. If you want an Aran sweater, the cream wool knitwear the islands made famous, buy it here. The popular story that each family's stitch pattern was used to identify drowned fishermen is a 20th-century invention, but the sweaters are real, and warm.

Every Saturday, stalls fill the lane around St Nicholas' Church, as they have in some form for centuries: farmers' vegetables, cheese, oysters, bread, crafts, and hot food from all over the world. Locals queue for the crêpes and the curry stalls. Have breakfast standing up, then go next door to Sheridan's Cheesemongers on Churchyard Street, where the Irish farmhouse cheeses alone are worth the trip, with a wine bar upstairs.

Walk south through the lanes of the Latin Quarter. Kirwan's Lane, between Cross Street and Quay Street, is a restored 16th-century merchant lane, one of the few that still looks the way the whole town once did. On Middle Street, Charlie Byrne's is a rambling second-hand bookshop where you can easily lose an hour.

Then check what's on at Druid, one of the best theater companies in Ireland, founded in Galway in 1975. Its small theater on Druid Lane is now called the Mick Lally Theatre, after one of its founders, and if there's a show tonight, it's a better farewell than any pub.

Cross the Salmon Weir Bridge and follow the riverside path north along the west bank, past the University, rowing clubs, swans and fishermen, along the biodiversity trail towards Dangan, where the city gives way to fields. Across the water, about 3 km upstream, stands the ivy-covered ruin of Menlo Castle, the home of the Blakes, another of the Tribes, until it burned down in 1910. It's the most romantic ruin around Galway, best seen from this side of the river.

In summer, the Corrib Princess runs 90-minute cruises from Woodquay up the river to the lake, an easier way to see the same thing.

For the last dinner, Galway cooks well above its size. Aniar, on Dominick Street, has held a Michelin star since 2013 for cooking only with what grows and swims in the west of Ireland. Kai, on Sea Road, does the same thing more simply. Ard Bia at Nimmo's, in an old stone building by the Spanish Arch, has been a local favorite for years. Book all three ahead.

For something more traditional, look for boxty, the potato pancake of the west, or a plate of oysters with brown bread and a pint of stout.

End where the West End meets the river, at Monroe's Tavern on Dominick Street, a big, friendly pub with music most nights. On Tuesdays there's Irish set dancing, worth a look after the session on day one. Or go back to whichever session you liked best this week. Most Galway musicians play in several pubs, so you'll probably find a familiar face.