Orientation
The town is essentially one main street - High Street which runs into Main Street - and a couple of side roads full to the brim with souvenir shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants, B&Bs and guesthouses. Pony traps are lined up against walls, while their weather-beaten owners talk visitors into taking trips through the surrounding countryside. These can be expensive and you might want to consider taking a combined pony and trap and boating trip as an alternative . The town's Irish name Cill Airne (which means Church of the Sloe) doesn't imply a settlement of any great antiquity, and the Cromwellian Survey of 1654 found no town or village of that name in existence. By 1756, however, a burgeoning tourist trade , fed by the growing Romantic attraction to lakes and mountains, had created Killarney: "A new street with a large commodious inn was designed to be built here, for the curiosities of the neighbouring lake have of late drawn great numbers of curious travellers to visit it," said a contemporary survey. The local landowner, Lord Kenmare, quickly spotted commercial opportunities and granted free leases for new inns and houses, building four major roads to connect his creation with the outside world. That said, the town doesn't look particularly planned, and the only building of any distinction is the high Gothic Revival cathedral , built by Augustus Pugin in 1855. A particularly florid Victorian interpretation of medieval architecture, the cathedral inspires respect or derision, but is certainly worth seeing. During the Famine, when building work ceased for five years, the covered area served as a hospital for victims of starvation and disease.
Your Tip for Killarney
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Killarney - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Killarney - visit the main Killarney forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Killarney webguide section below! Thanks.
|
