The history of Galway
The 1124 fort, the Tribes and their charter, Columbus, the Spanish trade, Cromwell, the Queen's College and the railway. 16 moments, in order.
- 1124
A fort at the mouth of the river
Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht and High King of Ireland, completed Dún Gaillimhe, a fort at the mouth of the river that gives the city its name. His fleet used it as a naval base, and a settlement grew up around it on the site of an older one.
- 1230s
The Normans take it
Richard Mór de Burgh, who led the Norman invasion of Connacht, captured the fort. As the de Burghs became more Irish than the Irish, the town's merchants began to press for control of the walled town themselves.
- 1484
A charter and a mayor
In December 1484 the English crown gave Galway mayoral status, and the merchant families took complete control. Peirce Lynch Fitzjohn was the first mayor. Fourteen families, twelve of them of Norman origin and two Irish, ran the town for generations: the Tribes of Galway, which is why the city is still called the City of the Tribes.
- 1477
Columbus at the church
Christopher Columbus visited Galway in 1477, possibly on a voyage towards Iceland. Years later he noted in his own copy of Imago Mundi that he had seen a man and a woman of extraordinary appearance land at Galway on two timbers; the likeliest explanation is that they were Inuit carried east by the Atlantic current.
- 1493
The Lynch window
A plaque on Market Street keeps the city's best-known legend: that in 1493 the mayor, James Lynch FitzStephen, hanged his own son for the murder of a young Spanish visitor. The Lynch Window marks the spot.
- 1519
The Spanish Arch
Galway was the main Irish port for trade with Spain and France, and the reminder of that trade is the arch built at the end of the town wall during the mayoralty of Wylliam Martin in 1519 to 1520. It was called ceann an bhalla, the end of the wall; everyone now calls it the Spanish Arch.
- 1562
Keeping the O'Flahertys out
The town's relations with its Irish neighbours were uneasy. A notice over the west gate, finished in 1562 under Mayor Thomas Óge Martyn, read "From the Ferocious O'Flahertys may God protect us", and a by-law forbade any O or Mac to strut or swagger through the streets without leave.
- 1642 to 1652
Confederation and siege
Loyal to the crown for most of two centuries, the city joined the Catholic Confederation in 1642. Cromwell's army took it after a siege of nine months.
- 1691
The Williamites
Galway backed the Jacobites in the Williamite war and fell to the Williamites after a short siege soon after the Battle of Aughrim. The great families were ruined, and the city declined; the Famine of the 1840s hit it again.
- 1845 to 1849
The Queen's College
The quadrangle of what is now the University of Galway went up in 1849, during the Famine, as one of the three Queen's Colleges of Ireland. The Railway Hotel on Eyre Square, today the Hardiman, dates from 1845 and is the city's oldest hotel still open.
- 1851
The railway
The Midland Great Western Railway reached Galway in August 1851, with a direct line to Dublin. The station was renamed for Éamonn Ceannt in 1966. Athenry became a junction for Limerick and Sligo, and a branch to Clifden opened in 1895 and closed in 1935.
- 1848 to 1858
Canals and mills
Two schemes, one in the 1850s and one in the 1950s, cut canals through the city to tame the Corrib, drive mills and give boats a way to the sea. The Eglinton Canal runs a little over a kilometre from the university to the Claddagh, and the university still turns a water turbine on Nuns' Island.
- 1937 to 2001
Borough, county borough, city
The urban district became the Borough of Galway in 1937, left County Galway as a county borough in 1986, and was renamed Galway City in 2001. The civic sword of the 1620s and the great mace of 1710 still go before the mayor on formal occasions.
- 1965
A cathedral on the gaol
Galway Cathedral was consecrated in 1965 on the site of the old county gaol, built in limestone with a Renaissance Revival dome and a Romanesque portico, an unusual thing for a modern Irish church.
- 1978
The Arts Festival
The Galway Arts Festival began in 1978 and grew into one of the biggest in Ireland; Macnas and Druid are its home performers. The Film Fleadh followed in 1989, and the Races, first run in the 1860s, draw crowds well into six figures every August.
- 2020
European Capital of Culture
Named a UNESCO City of Film in 2014 and European Region of Gastronomy in 2018, Galway was European Capital of Culture for 2020 together with Rijeka in Croatia. The 2022 census counted 85,910 people, more than ten thousand up on 2011.
Where this comes from
Every paragraph above summarises a statement in Wikipedia, "Galway", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, as it read on 2026-09-19. Follow it for the footnotes. Nothing has been added from memory.