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GalwayOnFoot.ieSpiddal
The 3D model of Spiddal: every building standing up, with the shops and services pinned

Spiddal, street by street

A village named for a medieval leper hospital, on the shore of Galway Bay at the edge of the Gaeltacht, where three in four people speak Irish and the pubs play the music.

Spiddal is a town of 254 people, 17 km west of Galway city. This page is a working model of it: every one of its 1,721 buildings stands on the map above, and 149 shops, cafés, schools, churches and services have a page each, with the street, the hours where recorded, the nearest bus stop and car park, and a plan of the streets around it. Everything comes from open map data and says so.

Today
Weather in Spiddal

Live forecast for the centre, hour by hour and the week ahead.

Buses, roads, parking
Getting to Spiddal

17 km from Galway, 11 km from Aerphort Chonamara, 2 bus stops, 1 car park.

See and do
Things to do

The pier and strand, Cill Éinde, the craft village, the Ó Cadhain memorial, Cnoc Suain.

Since middle ages
The history of Spiddal

The leper hospital, the Famine harbour, the orphanage, the 1904 church, the Waterboys.

Facts
About the town

Population 254 at the 2022 census, where it is, what is here.

What is in Spiddal

6 restaurants, 3 pubs, 8 shops, 2 hairdressers and beauty and 2 supermarkets and more, by kind. Each kind has a page listing every one, closest to the pier first.

Food and drink
Shops
Health
Services
Motoring
Community
Sport and leisure
Places to stay
Things to see
Other

All 47 kinds of place

Guides to Spiddal

All 4 guides
Irish singer Dolores Keane with De Dannan, Irish folk band at the Trowbridge Folk Festival, 1985 (restored and colorised image). Photo credit: Tony Rees
Music
De Dannan and Dolores Keane

De Dannan came out of sessions in Hughes's pub in Spiddal in 1975, formed by Frankie Gavin of Corrandulla on fiddle, Alec Finn on…

Main Street (R336 regional road), Spiddal, Co Galway Spiddal facing east.
Village
Spiddal in the Gaeltacht

An Spidéal, 18 km west of Galway on the R336, takes its name from a medieval leper hospital in West Spiddal; about 75% of its people…

Transport
The R336 coast road

The R336 is the 83 km regional road from the N6 and N83 in Galway west along the bay through Salthill, Barna, Furbo, Spiddal and Inverin…

People
Máirtín Ó Cadhain

Máirtín Ó Cadhain, born in Connemara on 4 January 1906 and died in Dublin on 18 October 1970, was the most important Irish-language…

Food and drink

Where to eat in Spiddal

9 cafés, restaurants, takeaways and pubs on the map, 8 of them within 300 m of the pier. 4 have hours on record.

  1. Tigh HughesPubs · Bhóthar an tSléibhe
  2. Cois CuainPubs
  3. Bláth FiáinRestaurants
  4. Supermac'sTakeaways
  5. Fiordigrano PizzeriaRestaurants
  6. An NeadPubs
  7. Apache PizzaTakeaways
  8. rúndaCafés

Restaurants · Cafés · Takeaways · Pubs

Plan of Spiddal with every place to eat marked

Every place to eat and drink as a pin; tap one for its page and directions.

Street by street

All 29 streets
  1. Bhóthar an tSléibhe
    link road L1320 · 3.5 km
    10 places
  2. 10 places
  3. Cois Trá
    residential street · 133 m
    5 places
  4. Bóthar Na Seanchéibhe
    service road L13204 · 208 m
    2 places
  5. Baile an Ghleanna
    minor road L52012 · 281 m
    1 place

Things to see around Spiddal

The pier at Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland.
The pier at Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland.
User:O'Dea, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Spiddal Pier
Spiddal Pier
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Beach at Spiddal
Beach at Spiddal
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Castles, abbeys, old churches, beaches, viewpoints and parks within 12 km, closest first, plus 1 ringfort and ancient site on their own pages.

  1. An tSeanmhainistirRuins · 82 m
  2. Máirtín Ó CadhainMonuments · 256 m
  3. Páirc Spraoi an SpidéilPlaygrounds · 1.9 km
  4. Coill Sheanadh MhóinínWoods · 2.5 km
  5. Lough LoganannyLakes · 3.0 km
  6. Loch na gCaorán DubhLakes · 3.7 km
  7. Loch NiollachLakes · 3.8 km
  8. Loch Bhoth Loiscthe (Íochtarach)Lakes · 4.8 km
  9. Lough GearyLakes · 5.5 km

Ringforts · Beaches · Hotels

Spiddal in pictures

Photographs of the place and the country around it, each from an open archive and credited to the person who took it.

The pier at Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland.
The pier at Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland.
User:O'Dea, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Spiddal Pier
Spiddal Pier
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Beach at Spiddal
Beach at Spiddal
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Beach at Spiddal
Beach at Spiddal
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Harbour and pier
Harbour and pier
Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Boats, Spiddal Harbour
Boats, Spiddal Harbour
N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Spiddal Harbour
Spiddal Harbour
Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
View at Spiddal Harbour
View at Spiddal Harbour
Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Questions people ask

Where is Spiddal?
Spiddal is in County Galway, in the west of Ireland, 17 km west of Galway city and 203 km west of Dublin.
What is the population of Spiddal?
254 people at the 2022 census.
How far is Spiddal from Galway?
17 km in a straight line from the pier to the centre of Galway city; the road is a little longer.
What is Spiddal known for?
Its Irish, spoken by three quarters of the village, the summer language colleges, the craft village, the pier and beach on Galway Bay, and Ros na Rún, which is filmed here.
What is the weather like in Spiddal today?
The weather page shows the live forecast for the centre, hour by hour for the next day and day by day for the week.

How the model is built

The buildings are OpenStreetMap footprints, read on 2026-09-18, stood up to the height the map records or a plain two storeys where it records none. Streets, water and the base map come from the same project through OpenFreeMap. Places are the named shops, services and public buildings on the map; each has its own page.

A building takes the colour of the kind of place inside it: restaurants in red, pharmacies in green, schools in yellow. Nothing is invented to fill a gap: a missing fact is shown as missing, with a link to add it to the map. More about the model.