Discover Limerick

The Treaty City on the Shannon

Limerick stands where the River Shannon, Ireland's longest, reaches the tide on its way to the Atlantic estuary. The medieval city grew on King's Island, the Norman core around King John's Castle and St Mary's Cathedral, and spread south in the eighteenth century into the planned Georgian grid of Newtown Pery, the O'Connell Street spine and the elegant terraces of Pery Square. Its Irish name, Luimneach, means bare marsh. Locals call it the Treaty City, after the Treaty of Limerick signed here in 1691, and the Treaty Stone on Clancy Strand is the city's emblem.

The reasons to come are genuine and varied. Limerick is the rugby heartland of Ireland, home of Munster Rugby at Thomond Park. It holds the finest Georgian architecture outside Dublin, a serious market-and-food culture centred on the Milk Market, and deep medieval history on King's Island. The Hunt Museum keeps a world-class private collection in the old Custom House, and the city is a natural base for the wider Mid-West, from Adare to the Shannon Estuary. It is a compact, walkable city that has worked hard on its own regeneration, and it wears that renewal with some pride.