Pete Seaward

County Waterford

Diverse County Waterford harbours seaside settlements along its sandy coastline, from pretty fishing villages to surf meccas. You'll also find historic churches, cathedrals and castles, a warren of walking trails in the beautiful Nire Valley, concealed among the Comeragh and Monavullagh Mountains, and lively Waterford city, with its maze of medieval lanes and well-preserved Georgian architecture.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout County Waterford.

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St Declan's Monastery
The ruins of Ireland's oldest Christian settlement occupy a striking setting on a hill above Ardmore, strewn with gravestones both ancient and new. The most prominent landmark is the 30m-high round tower, one of the best examples in Ireland. But the most remarkable is the roofless shell of Ardmore Cathedral, in particular the Romanesque arcading on the west gable, decorated with worn but still wonderful 12th-century stone carvings of biblical scenes – very unusual in Ireland.
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Medieval Museum
Housed in a stunning modern structure that incorporates several medieval buildings and part of the city wall in its basement (all on display), this museum documents Waterford's medieval history in glowing detail. The highlights of the collection are the extraordinary 15th-century cloth-of-gold church vestments, made from silk woven in Florence and embroidered in Bruges around 1460. Hidden beneath Christ Church Cathedral and forgotten for 123 years, they are a rare survivor and one of the great treasures of medieval Europe.
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House of Waterford Crystal
This large modern complex combines a retail shop and cafe with a factory offering a 90-minute tour that shows how world-famous Waterford crystal is produced. The highlight is the blowing room where you can watch skilled artisans transform blobs of red-hot molten glass into delicate crystalware. The tour ends, inevitably, in the shop, where twinkling displays range from a €30 bottle coaster to a €30,000 crystal version of Cinderella's carriage.
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Lismore Castle Gardens
Although Lismore Castle itself is not open to the public, the 3 hectares of ornate and manicured gardens are well worth a visit. Thought to be the oldest landscaped gardens in Ireland, they are divided into the walled Jacobean upper garden and the less formal lower garden, the latter dotted with modern sculpture, including two chunks of the Berlin Wall. Highlights include a splendid yew walk, where Edmund Spenser is said to have written The Faerie Queen.
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Reginald's Tower
Ireland's oldest complete building and the first to use mortar, 13th-century Reginald's Tower, the city's key fortification, is an outstanding example of medieval architecture. Its 3m- to 4m-thick walls were built on the site of a Viking wooden tower. Over the years the building served as an arsenal, a prison and a mint; it now houses a museum recording the city's Viking and early medieval history. The sparse exhibits include the tiny but exquisite Waterford Kite Brooch, made around 1100.
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Copper Coast Geopark
Inscribed on Unesco's World Heritage list in 2004, this 20km stretch of rugged coastline, centred on the village of Bunmahon, takes its name from the copper-mining industry that flourished here in the 19th century. The most visible legacy of the area's mining history is the Cornish-style winding-engine house at Tankardstown, 1km east of Bunmahon, and you'll find a Geological Garden on the eastern edge of Bunmahon.
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St Carthage's Cathedral
William Thackeray commented on the prettiness of the edifice of Lismore's 17th-century cathedral in 1842 after visiting, and that was before the addition of the Edward Burne-Jones stained-glass window, which features all the Pre-Raphaelite hallmarks: an effeminate knight and a pensive maiden against a sensuous background of deep-blue velvet and intertwined flowers. There are some noteworthy 16th-century tombs, including the elaborately engraved MacGrath family crypt dating from 1557, with the 12 apostles carved around the sides.
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Curraghmore Estate
The 10-sq-km Curraghmore Estate has belonged to the family of Lord and Lady Waterford since the 12th century. Its lavish gardens incorporate the whimsical shell house, built by Catherine Countess of Tyrone in 1754, who arranged for local sea captains to bring her seashells from distant shores. There are 90-minute guided tours of the Georgian main house and shell house at 11am and 2pm. Curraghmore is 19km northwest of Waterford city, off the R680 near the pretty village of Portlaw.
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Ballysaggartmore Towers
One of Ireland's most striking architectural follies sits 3.5km northwest of Lismore in woodland that was once the demesne of Arthur Keily-Ussher, a harsh Anglo-Irish landlord who evicted Famine-stricken tenants. In 1834, his wife demanded an estate to match her sister-in-law's, so he ordered the construction of two Gothic-style gate lodges as a prelude to a huge mansion. But Keily-Ussher ran out of money, and, to the delight of locals given his mistreatment of tenants, the house was never built.