Discover Galway

The City of the Tribes

Galway grew up as a walled Anglo-Norman trading town on the edge of Gaelic Connacht, and for five centuries it was run by fourteen merchant families: Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D'Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris and Skerritt. Cromwell's forces meant the name as an insult, but the families wore it with pride, and the city has answered to the City of the Tribes ever since. Their mark is still on the streets: Lynch's Castle on Shop Street is one of the best-preserved medieval townhouses in Ireland, and the Hall of the Red Earl, the oldest excavated building in the town, sits under glass behind the Custom House.

The water made the place and still defines it. The River Corrib runs fast and cold straight through the centre, out under the Spanish Arch and the painted houses of the Long Walk into Galway Bay. Across the Wolfe Tone Bridge, the Claddagh was a self-governing fishing village with its own king long before it was a suburb, and the Claddagh ring, two hands holding a crowned heart, carried its name around the world. Today Galway is Ireland's arts capital, a UNESCO City of Film, a bilingual student city and the jumping-off point for Connemara and the Aran Islands. It is compact enough to cross in fifteen minutes and busy enough to feel like a place ten times its size.