Museum sights in County Kerry
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Writers’ Exhibition
Kerry Literary & Cultural Centre, with its audiovisual Writers’ Exhibition, is an absolute gem that gives due prominence to Listowel’s heritage of literary observers of Irish life. Rooms are devoted to local greats such as John B Keane and Bryan MacMahon, with simple, haunting tableaux narrating their lives and recordings of them reading their work. There is a cafe and a performance space where events are sometimes staged.
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Kerry County Museum
An absolute treat, Kerry's county museum has excellent interpretive displays on Irish historical events and trends, with an emphasis on County Kerry. The Medieval Experience re-creates life (smells and all) in Tralee in 1450. Check out the deranged nights, a vision of horror right out of Monty Python. Children will love strolling the medieval streets and there's a commentary in various languages. The Tom Crean Room celebrates the local hero, an early-20th-century explorer who accompanied both Scott and Shackleton on epic Antarctic expeditions. It's housed in the neoclassical Ashe Memorial Hall.
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Visitor Centre
The modern visitor centre at Blennerville houses an exhibition on grain-milling, and on the thousands of emigrants who boarded ‘coffin ships’ from what was then Kerry’s largest embarkation point. There’s also a database of the Irish émigrés who flocked to America. Admission includes a 30-minute guided tour of the windmill.
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Medieval Experience
The Medieval Experience, is an enjoyable multimedia presentation re-creating life (smells and all) in Tralee in 1450. Children love strolling the medieval streets and there's a commentary in various languages.
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Tom Crean Room
The Tom Crean Room at the Kerry County Museum celebrates the local hero who accompanied both Scott and Shackleton on epic Antarctic expeditions.
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Barracks Heritage Centre
The Old Barracks Heritage Centre is housed in a tower of the former Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The barracks were burnt down in 1922 by anti-Treaty forces. Today it looks over-restored, like an oddball confection.
Topped by a spiral staircase ascending to a lookout (best suited for those who don't care to see anything), the museum covers the Fenian Rising, Daniel O'Connell and Caherciveen's other great son, Gaelic football star Jack O'Shea. There are recreations of a local dwelling at the time of the Famine and of the barracks during the 1916 Easter Rising.
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