WalkEasy15 to 30 minutes
The Diamond & Four Masters Monument
← All things to do
About
The Diamond is Donegal Town's central pedestrian square, laid out by Sir Basil Brooke after 1607 in the classic Ulster plantation-town pattern also seen in Clones and Enniskillen: a market place with the main streets converging on it. At its centre stands a freestanding sandstone obelisk, erected in 1934 and unveiled in 1938 by the Bishop of Raphoe, commemorating the four Franciscan scholars who compiled the Annals of the Four Masters in the ruins of Donegal Abbey between 1632 and 1636. A slow circuit of the square, reading the monument's inscriptions and taking in the tweed and craft shopfronts around it, is a free, five-to-fifteen-minute stop that explains more of the town's history than almost anything else in it.
Highlights
- ✓The 1934 Four Masters obelisk with Celtic-cross and interlacing motifs
- ✓The classic Ulster plantation-town street layout, unchanged in shape since the 1600s
- ✓Surrounding tweed and craft shopfronts, including Magee 1866
- ✓Free and always accessible
Tips
- →Read the names on the obelisk base; each of the four scholars is named separately.
- →Pair with a shop around the square, including Magee 1866, for tweed and craft.
- →A good wet-weather option since most of it can be seen from under cover of the surrounding arcades.
Best Season
SpringSummerAutumnWinter
