Kilkenny Castle

Kilkenny Castle stands on The Parade overlooking the River Nore in the centre of Kilkenny City, built originally as a stone fortress in 1195 by William Marshal on the site of an earlier wooden structure erected by Strongbow. The Butler family, later Earls and Dukes of Ormond, acquired the castle in 1391 and held it almost continuously until 1935, making it one of the longest single-family occupations of any Irish castle. Of the original Norman fortification, three of the four corner towers survive, though the current appearance is largely the result of extensive remodelling in the Victorian era, when the Butlers reworked the castle in a Gothic Revival style. The interior tour moves through the restored staterooms, including the Drawing Room and the Long Gallery, an 86-foot picture gallery with a decorated hammerbeam-style painted ceiling depicting Celtic and mythological motifs, completed in the 1830s and repainted in the 1990s restoration. The gallery displays portraits of generations of the Butler family alongside furniture and tapestries collected over the centuries. After the family left in 1935, the castle fell into disrepair before the City of Kilkenny purchased it for a nominal sum in 1967; the Office of Public Works subsequently carried out a decades-long restoration completed in stages through the 1990s. The 20-hectare parkland surrounding the castle, laid out in the 18th and 19th centuries, includes a walled rose garden and is open to the public free of charge. The castle's basement now houses the Butler Gallery, a contemporary art space unconnected to the historical collection.