Things to do
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Dunguaire Castle
A tower house of 1520 on a rock spit in Kinvara harbour, restored in the twentieth century and used for medieval banquets, and one of the most photographed buildings in the west. It is thirty minutes south on the Burren road.
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Galway Cathedral
A limestone cathedral of 1965 built on the site of the old city gaol, with a copper dome, a Renaissance nave and a mosaic of the risen Christ beside a portrait of John F. Kennedy. Locally it is called the last great stone cathedral built in Europe.
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Galway City Museum
A free three-floor museum beside the Spanish Arch covering the medieval town, the Claddagh fishing village and the 1916 rising in the west, with a Galway hooker sailing boat hung in the atrium. The top floor looks over the river mouth.
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Claddagh
The old fishing village across the river mouth from the Spanish Arch, self-governing under its own king until the 1930s, whose thatched cottages were cleared in 1934 and replaced with the housing there now. The ring that carries its name was made here from the seventeenth century.
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Glenlo Abbey Hotel
An eighteenth-century estate house on Lough Corrib five kilometres from the city, with a dining room set inside two restored Orient Express carriages parked in the grounds. It is the country option within reach of the city centre.
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Lynch's Castle
A fortified merchant townhouse of about 1500 on Shop Street, carved with the arms of the Lynch, Fitzgerald and Plantagenet families and gargoyles along the parapet. It has been a working bank since 1930 and the ground floor is walked into.
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Salthill Promenade
Two kilometres of seafront west of the centre facing the Burren across the bay, with the Blackrock diving tower at the end that locals jump from year round. The custom is to kick the wall at the end before turning back.
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Spanish Arch
Two arches of the 1584 extension of the town wall on the bank of the Corrib, where ships once unloaded wine and salt from Spain, with the Long Walk of painted houses running north from it. The grass beside it is where the city sits out in summer.