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Orientation
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Galway's centre is defined by the
River Corrib
. Issuing from the lough, it thunders under the Salmon Weir Bridge and wraps itself round the full body of the city, meeting the lively
Shop and Quay streets
area at Wolfe Tone Bridge, where it flows into the bay. The quaint old shops and bars that give Galway its villagey appeal are being squeezed on all sides by ugly postmodern facades and bone-headed business development; the area around the bridge has to be one of the most architecturally abused spots in Ireland. Still, Galway is a robust city and somehow its charm pulls through. Over the bridge is the Claddagh, and about a mile and a half west of that is
Salthill
, Galway's commercial seaside town. The
Claddagh
now appears as a small area of modest housing, strangely flanked by a crusting of luxury apartments, but it's worth getting to know for some of its excellent bars and cheap eats. From any of the bridges you can wander beside the pleasant walkways of river and canals, checking out the industrial archeology, watching salmon make their way upstream, anglers fly-fishing in the centre of the city and cormorants diving for eels, while gawky herons splash through watery suburban back gardens. At the harbour, a walk out around the stone pier places the city in its impressive setting, with a level coastline stretching to the west and the eerie Burren hills washed and etched in half-tones across the bay.
Eyre Square is an almost inevitable starting point. This small park, set in the middle of a traffic interchange, is one of the places to which everyone seems to gravitate, the other being the Shop and Quay streets area. It's used as a performance space during festivals, and outdoor music sessions can start up here at any time, the relaxed atmosphere lending itself to improvisation. Visually, though, the place is a mess. A sentimental statue of the writer PA?draic A? Conaire, a seventeenth-century doorway, a couple of cannon from the Crimean War and a clutter of disused flagpoles all detract from what should form the focus of the square: Eamonn O'Donnell's splendid sculpture, whose arcs of rusted metal and gushing white fountains evoke the sails of a Galway hooker and the city's nautical history. The distinctive town houses of the merchant class - remnants of which are lightly littered around the city - also hark back to the prosperity of maritime Galway and its sense of civic dignity, with their finely carved doorways, windows and stone slabs bearing armorial carving. The Browne doorway in Eyre Square is one such monument, a bay window and doorway with the coats of arms of the Browne and Lynch families, dated 1627. Before you leave the square, it's worth calling into the Eyre Square Centre , as the building of this shopping mall in the late 1980s revealed impressive sections of medieval city walls, and these are preserved within the complex. Just about the finest medieval town house in Ireland is Lynch's Castle in Shop Street (leading off from the southwest of the square), now housing the Allied Irish Bank. The Lynchs were Galway's most prominent family for three hundred years from the late fifteenth century. A local story relates that in 1493 James Lynch Fitzstephen, mayor of the town, found his own son guilty of the jealous murder of a Spanish visitor, and that such was the popularity of the lad that no one in the town would take on the job of hangman - so the boy's father did it himself. The house, dating from the fifteenth century, has a smooth stone facade decorated with carved panels, medieval gargoyles and a lion devouring another animal. The front of the bank has been preserved, so step inside and pick up a leaflet for a detailed history of the building and its heraldry. The similarly styled Lynch's Window is on Market Street (further down Shop Street and to the right) just outside the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas . The largest medieval church in Ireland, it was built in 1320 and enlarged in the next two centuries. The building - dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra, patron saint of sailors - is also decorated with finely chiselled carvings and gargoyles. Continuing south along Market Street, and turning off into Bowling Green Lane, you'll come across the house that Nora Barnacle , wife of James Joyce, lived in. It's now been converted into a small museum (May-Sept Mon-Sat 9am-5pm; A?1/1.27) and contains, among other Joycean memorabilia, copies of the couple's letters. For arguably the best sense of medieval Galway make your way through the punters and the pints up to the top floor of Busker Browne's Bar , Cross Street (a short walk south from Nora Barnacle's house). The upper room was the meeting place of the tribes of Galway, and the building has served as a barracks and a Dominican convent. Down by the harbour stands the Spanish Arch ; more evocative in name than in reality, it's a sixteenth-century structure that was used to protect galleons unloading wine and rum. Behind it is a fine piece of medieval wall, and next door is the uninspiring Galway Museum (May-Sept daily 10am-1pm & 2.15-5.15pm), where the only things of real interest are old photographs of the Claddagh and a few examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stone carving from around the city. From the Spanish Arch you can take a pleasant walk north along a riverside path and across the Salmon Weir Bridge to the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas . Commissioned about thirty years ago and in hideous contrast to the Collegiate College, its copper dome seeps green stains down ugly limestone walls. Inside, the horrors continue in a senseless jumble of stone, mahogany and Connemara marble. It's so remarkably awful that it demands attention, and viewed from a distance its sheer bulk does achieve a grandeur of sorts. Nearby, across the bridge, the clean lines of the Neoclassical courthouse are mirrored in the municipal theatre opposite - an assured symbol of contemporary Galway's civic pride, and surprisingly conservative for a post-colonial nation.
On the road behind the cathedral is
University College Galway
, a mock-Tudor imitation of an Oxbridge college, which was opened in 1849 at a time when the majority of people in Connacht were starving. The university has the dubious distinction of having conferred an honorary degree on Ronald Reagan. More importantly, it is now UNESCO's base for an archive of spoken material in all Celtic languages, and summer courses in Irish for foreign students are held annually in July and August. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Ireland,
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