Sights in Cork City
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Lewis Glucksman Gallery
The Glucksman, a startling limestone, steel and timber construction, is a visible symbol of Corkonian optimism. Opened in 2004, the award-winning building has three huge display areas, which host ever-changing art exhibitions and installations. If you’re in town, don’t miss the free fortnightly curatorial tours; the website has details. The gallery’s situation in the grounds of the UCC means it’s always buzzing with people coming to attend lectures, view the artwork or procrastinate in the basement cafe, which serves modern European food; expect creative pastas, salads and the frequent appearance of Irish smoked salmon.
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Cork City Gaol
Faint-hearted souls may find Cork City Gaol a little grim, but it’s certainly a highly unusual and worthwhile attraction. An audio tour guides you around the restored cells, which feature models of suffering prisoners and sadistic-looking guards. It’s very moving, bringing home the harshness of the 19th-century penal system. The most common crime was that of poverty; many of the inmates were sentenced to hard labour for stealing loaves of bread.
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St Anne’s Church
Shandon is dominated by the 1722 St Anne’s Church, aka the ‘Four-Faced Liar’, so called as each of the tower’s four clocks used to tell a different time. Wannabe campanologists can ring the bells on the 1st floor of the 1750 Italianate tower and continue the 132 steps up to the top for 360-degree views of the city.
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Holy Trinity Church
The Holy Trinity Church was designed by the Pain brothers in 1834 in the honour of Father Theobald Mathew. He was one of Cork’s most famous figures, the ‘Apostle of Temperance’, who went on a short-lived crusade against alcohol in the 1830s and 1840s – a quarter of a million people took the ‘pledge’, and whiskey production halved.
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Old Butter Market
Cork had the largest butter market in the world during the 1860s, exporting butter as far as India, South America and Australia. The Butter Exchange was in Shandon and you can still spot dairy motifs throughout the area: look out for the cow above the old butter market, which was being used as a souvenir centre but is now closed.
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Beamish & Crawford Brewery
This famous brewery is the most ancient porter brewery in Ireland. Beer drinkers will love the well presented tours that end with a few rounds of the famous Beamish brews. The brewery is hard to miss as it is across the road from the Counting House, a building that takes first prize for eye-blinding, mock Tudor, architectural awfulness.
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Crawford Municipal Art Gallery
Cork’s public gallery houses a small but excellent permanent collection, featuring works by Irish artists, such as Jack Yeats and Seán Keating. Look out for Keating’s Men of the South (1921), a fine piece of historical romanticism depicting members of the North Cork Battalion of the IRA.
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National Radio Museum
The Natioanl Radio Museum is upstairs in the Cork City Gaol. The prison closed in 1923, reopening in 1927 as a radio station. The change of use is reflected in the museum where, alongside collections of beautiful old radios, you can hear the story of Guglielmo Marconi’s conquest of the airwaves.
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St Finbarre’s Cathedral
Spiky spires, gurning gargoyles and rich sculpture make up the exterior of Cork’s Protestant cathedral, an attention-grabbing mixture of French Gothic and medieval whimsy. Local legend says that the golden angel on the eastern side will blow its horn when the Apocalypse is due to start… Yikes!
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Blarney Castle
This is your chance to see a beautiful old castle (built 1210-1446), walk in some nice gardens, and, of course, kiss a magic stone that makes you talk better. But when you go to kiss the 'stone of elequence', kiss it early, before the coach crowds arrive.
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Cork Vision Centre
There’s a model exhibition at the Cork Vision Centre – literally. A huge and intriguing model of the city and its surrounds dominates the centre of this old church. Special exhibits include local art and engaging historical photographs.
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Red Abbey Tower
RedAbbeyTower, the only medieval building left in Cork, is all that remains of a 14th-century Augustinian priory. Its location is fairly anonymous, but a bit of imagination will help create a stirring sense of antiquity.
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Cork Butter Museum
The Cork Butter Museum has interesting displays showing how the Irish butter industry took a commodity item (butter) and created a brand (Kerry Gold) that has allowed farmers to sell the spreadable stuff at a premium.
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Blackrock Castle
Blackrock Castle is a restored 16th-century castle that now, rather incongruously, hosts a science centre and observatory. But kids love it and the pastoral location is worth the jaunt. Take bus 2 to get there.
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Cork Public Museum
Located in a pleasant Georgian house in Fitzgerald Park, this museum recounts Cork’s history from the Stone Age right up to local football legend Roy Keane with a diverse collection of local artefacts. There’s a cafe next door.
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Red Abbey Tower
Red Abbey Tower, the only medieval building left in Cork, is all that remains of a 14th-century Augustinian priory. Its location is fairly anonymous, but a bit of imagination will help create a stirring sense of antiquity.
reviewed
