Things to do
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Blarney Castle
A fifteenth-century keep eight kilometres north-west, where the Blarney Stone is kissed by lying back over a parapet gap while an attendant holds you. The gardens around it, including a poison garden and a fern-filled rock cleft, are the better half of the visit.
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Cork City Gaol
A castellated prison of 1824 on the hill above the western suburbs, held women and children, and later Republican prisoners in the Civil War, before it became the city's first radio station. The audio tour walks the wings with the cells left as found.
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Crawford Art Gallery
The old custom house of 1724 a National Cultural Institution holding the largest public collection of Irish art outside Dublin, built around a set of Canova casts sent from the Vatican in 1818. Admission is free and it is a ten-minute walk from the market.
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Elizabeth Fort
A star fort of 1601 above the south channel, later a barracks, a convict depot and a police station, now open free with a walkway around the full circuit of the ramparts. The view takes in the cathedral spires and the whole island city.
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English Market
A covered market trading since 1788 under a vaulted roof and a fountain, with the tripe and drisheen stalls that gave the city its own butchery vocabulary still working beside the fishmongers. The gallery cafe upstairs looks down the length of it.
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Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral
William Burges's French Gothic cathedral of 1879, built on the site of the seventh-century monastery the city grew from, with over twelve hundred sculptures and a gilt angel on the eastern roof said to sound the last trump. Nearly everything inside was designed by Burges himself.
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Shandon Bells
The tower of Saint Anne's on the north side, two faces of red sandstone and two of limestone, where visitors climb to a ringing chamber and are handed ropes to play the eight bells over the city. The clock is known locally as the four-faced liar because the dials disagree.