Guides to Galway city
75 articles, each about one thing people ask: a station, a square, a beach, a festival, a castle. Every one is written from a named source in this site’s own words, and every place it mentions is pinned on the model.
Ceannt Station is on Eyre Square in the centre of Galway: two platforms, trains to Dublin Heuston, Limerick and Athenry, a booking office, waiting…
Eyre Square is the park at the heart of Galway, beside the railway station and the top of Shop Street: a medieval green given to the city in 1710,…
The Spanish Arch and the Blind Arch are the two surviving arches of the wall built in 1584 to guard Galway's quays; the Eyres cut them through in…
Salthill is Galway's seaside, two kilometres of promenade along Galway Bay south-west of the centre: bathing lodges from the 1830s, a tramway from…
Galway Cathedral, the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, was built of local limestone on the site of the old gaol between…
Galway City Museum stands behind the Spanish Arch in a purpose-built home opened in 2007: medieval stones from the Tribes' houses, the civic sword…
Shop Street is Galway's main street, pedestrianised since the late 1990s and lined with old brick buildings, bright shopfronts, pubs and buskers;…
Lynch's Castle on Shop Street is a fortified townhouse of the Lynch family, one of the Tribes of Galway, built in the 15th or early 16th century…
The Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, founded in 1320 and dedicated to the patron of seafarers, is Galway's medieval parish church: raised to…
The Claddagh is the old fishing village where the Corrib meets Galway Bay, across the river from the Spanish Arch: thatched cottages until the…
The Galway Races run for seven days from the last Monday of July at Ballybrit, with the Galway Plate on the Wednesday and the Galway Hurdle and…
The Galway International Arts Festival fills the city for two weeks in late July: theatre, music in the Big Top on the Fisheries Field, visual…
The Corrib runs only six kilometres from Lough Corrib through Galway to the bay, yet by flow it is Ireland's second river after the Shannon; it…
Galway Bay runs 50 km from the city to the Aran Islands, between Connemara's granite and the Burren's limestone: four sounds through the islands,…
The Tribes of Galway were the 14 merchant families, Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Darcy, Deane, Font, French, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris…
The Galway hooker is the traditional sailing boat of Galway Bay: black hull, rust-red sails, one mast, built for rough water. Four classes from…
The Claddagh ring shows two hands holding a crowned heart: love, loyalty and friendship. Made in Galway since at least 1700 and named for the…
Menlo Castle, or Blake's Castle, is the ivy-covered ruin on the east bank of the Corrib above Galway: a 16th-century tower house of 1569 extended…
Macnas is the Galway spectacle company founded in 1986 whose parades of giant puppets and drummers fill the streets at Halloween and St Patrick's…
The University of Galway opened in 1849 as Queen's College with 68 students; its Tudor Gothic Quadrangle by the Corrib copies Christ Church,…
The Galway Film Fleadh is Ireland's leading film festival, held every July since 1989: the place Irish films premiere, the Galway Film Fair for…
Pearse Stadium on Dr Mannix Road in Salthill is Galway GAA's principal ground: opened on 16 June 1957 on a bog filled with Corrib dredgings,…
Galway Airport at Carnmore, 7 km east of the city, has had no scheduled flights since Aer Arann stopped on 31 October 2011; its 1,289-metre runway…
The Galway International Oyster Festival runs on the last weekend of September, the first month of the oyster season: started in 1954 by hotel…
The Eglinton Canal links Galway to Lough Corrib: proposed by Alexander Nimmo in 1822, dug from 1848 to 1852 as Famine relief with two locks and…
Galway United, the Tribesmen, play in the League of Ireland Premier Division at Eamonn Deacy Park in Terryland: founded in the Claddagh as Galway…
Connacht Rugby is the western province's professional team, based at the 12,000-capacity Galway Greyhound Stadium, the Sportsground: a branch…
Galway GAA runs Gaelic games across the county from Pearse Stadium in Salthill: one of the few dual counties, once with separate hurling and…
University Hospital Galway on Newcastle Road is the Saolta group's Model 4 hospital for the west: born as Galway Central Hospital in 1924, rebuilt…
Galway County Council, Comhairle Chontae na Gaillimhe, is the local authority for County Galway outside the city: set up on 1 April 1899, 39…
The Salmon Weir Bridge crosses the Corrib beside the cathedral: designed by William Vitruvius Morrison to link the new courthouse to the new gaol…
Galway Courthouse on Courthouse Square was designed by Sir Richard Morrison in the neoclassical style, begun in 1812 and opened on 1 April 1815,…
The Town Hall Theatre on Courthouse Square, Amharclann Halla na Cathrach, was built in 1824 and 1825 to Alexander Hay's neoclassical design as the…
Druid, founded in Galway in 1975 by Garry Hynes, Marie Mullen and Mick Lally from the university drama society, was the first professional theatre…
An Taibhdhearc at 19 Middle Street is the national Irish-language theatre, opened on 27 August 1928 with Micheál Mac Liammóir's Diarmuid agus…
Galway Arts Centre at 47 Dominick Street, an 1840s Persse family house, grew in 1982 out of the Galway Arts Group that had founded the Arts…
Ballybrit Racecourse, Galway Racecourse, lies in Castlegar 6 km north-east of the city beside the N6: a right-handed track of about a mile and…
Galway Greyhound Stadium, the old Galway Sportsgrounds on College Road, opened on 1 July 1932 on the west side of Lough Atalia: greyhound racing…
Galway City Council, Comhairle Cathrach na Gaillimhe, runs the city from City Hall on College Road: 18 councillors in three electoral areas…
Atlantic Technological University was formed on 1 April 2022 from Galway-Mayo IT, IT Sligo and Letterkenny IT: its Galway campus on the Dublin…
The Port of Galway, run by the Galway Harbour Company, handles about 500,000 tonnes a year of fuel, timber, cement and fish in an inner dock for…
Renmore, An Rinn Mhór, the big headland, is the suburb 2 km east of the centre between Lough Atalia and Lurgan Park, south of the Old Dublin Road,…
Knocknacarra, Cnoc na Cathrach, 5 km west of the centre between Salthill and Barna, grew from 153 people in 1913 to about 17,000 or 18,000 by…
Ballybane, An Baile Bán, the white homestead, is the east Galway suburb between the Old Dublin Road, Mervue, Ballybrit and Doughiska: ringforts…
Doughiska, Dabhach Uisce, the water basin, is the townland on the eastern edge of Galway that stayed farmland with a fine marble quarry, used in…
Shantalla, Sean Talamh, the old ground, west of the city centre, had a granite quarry from 1889 whose mottled red and pink stone was called…
Roscam is the medieval monastic site and national monument 4 km east of Galway city on the north shore of Oranmore Bay: a 5th-century foundation…
Galway Bay FM, launched as Radio West in 1989 as the first legal local radio station in Galway and renamed in 1993, was bought outright by the…
The Galway Advertiser is the free newspaper delivered across the city and county every Thursday: founded by Ronnie O'Gorman with a first edition…
The Connacht Tribune, An Curadh Connachtach, is County Galway's regional newspaper, printed on Thursday with the Galway City Tribune on Friday and…
There are two Galway Girls. Steve Earle wrote The Galway Girl about meeting Joyce Redmond in the city and recorded it with Sharon Shannon on…
At least three songs are called Galway Bay: My Own Dear Galway Bay, written in London by Francis Fahy of Kinvara, first recorded in 1927 and made…
Nora Barnacle, born Norah in the Galway workhouse on 21 March 1884 to a Connemara baker and a dressmaker, met James Joyce in Dublin on 10 June…
Pádraic Ó Conaire, born in the Lobster Pot pub on the New Docks on 28 February 1882 and orphaned by eleven, learned his Irish with an uncle in Ros…
Liam Mellows, born in an English barracks in 1892, led about 700 Volunteers in County Galway at Easter 1916, attacking the RIC at Oranmore and…
Cúirt, the court, is Galway's literary festival, held over a week each April since 1985: readings of poetry and fiction, debates, slams, launches,…
The N6 Galway City Ring Road, the Galway Bypass, is the proposed 18 km road from Coolagh junction in Doughiska to the R336 coast road west of…
Coláiste Iognáid, the Jes, is the co-educational, non-fee-paying, no-uniform Jesuit secondary school on Sea Road with about 600 pupils: the…
Coláiste Éinde, St Enda's College, on Threadneedle Road in Salthill, was founded at Blake's House in Furbo on 23 October 1928 as an Irish-medium…
St Mary's College was founded in 1912 as the junior seminary of the dioceses of Galway and Kilmacduagh, its main building of granite and limestone…
Blake's Castle on Quay Street is a tower house of about 1470, one of only two surviving fortified town houses of the Tribes of Galway with Lynch's…
Galwegians, founded in 1922, is the rugby club at Crowley Park on the Dublin Road since 1963, the first club to use the Sportsground when it…
Galway's two senior junior clubs both return to the League of Ireland in August 2026 as founder members of the FAI National League: Mervue United,…
The city's clubs: Castlegar, hurling since the 1880s, seventeen county titles between 1936 and 1984 and All-Ireland club champions in 1980, the…
Coláiste na Coiribe is the Irish-medium secondary school of Galway city, run by the Galway and Roscommon ETB: founded in 1992 with six pupils on…
Galway Technical Institute on Father Griffin Road in the Claddagh is the further education college of QQI Level 5 and 6 courses in ten departments…
Nicola Coughlan, born in Galway on 9 January 1987 and raised in Oranmore, the youngest of four children of an Irish Army father, played Clare…
Walter Macken, born in Galway on 3 May 1915 and died on 22 April 1967, was an actor at An Taibhdhearc, where he met his wife Peggy, and at the…
Ken Bruen, born in Galway on 3 January 1951 and died there on 29 March 2025, wrote hardboiled and noir crime fiction: educated at Gormanston and…
The Stunning, formed in Galway in 1987 by Steve Wall, played their first show at the Hilltop Hotel in Salthill and were based at the Warwick…
Michael D. Higgins, born in Limerick on 18 April 1941, was President of Ireland from November 2011 to November 2025: a Galway Labour senator from…
Two Connacht careers: Eric Elwood, the Galway fly-half from Coláiste Iognáid's 1985 cup team, 35 Ireland caps and 296 points, 168 games and 1,152…
Two Galway footballers who went through Mervue United to England: Aaron Connolly, born 28 January 2000, from Maree/Oranmore at five and Mervue at…
James Hardiman, Séamus Ó hArgadáin, born in Westport in February 1782 and died on 13 November 1855, was the first librarian of Queen's College…
Joe Connolly, born in Castlegar on 13 October 1956 into a large Irish-speaking family that later made hurleys, captained Galway to the All-Ireland…