The Top Museums in County Kerry, Ireland

A regal-feeling house built in the 19th century in the Killarney National Park, Muckross, despite the addition of a working farm and high-end craft gallery on the site, maintains much of its original charm, both in the fading glamour of its furniture and décor and in the spectacular gardens. For many, though, the best thing about Muckross is the traditional horse and carriage rides. Locals typically full of wit operate the jaunting cars and tell tales of the Kerry of old as they plod around the paths of the Muckross grounds.

One for the petrol heads, the Kilgarvan Motor Museum is a tiny, family-run spot that’s home to a slightly worse-for-wear selection of gorgeous old cars, from the 1960s bubble car, the BMW Isetta, to curvy Fords and Bentleys. In amongst them are ancient tractors and other motoring memorabilia. A little off-the-beaten track, Kilgarvan is something of a ‘living museum’ in that nothing’s tucked away behind too much of the protection you might expect at a museum. It’s a car-obsessed kid’s dream, and a great day out for a young family.

A fantastic collection of ancient artefacts, including a woolly mammoth skull, a nest of dinosaur eggs, a complete baby dinosaur skeleton and countless other fossils and objects from pre-documented humans, lives within the Celtic Prehistoric Museum. It’s not a large museum, and the practice of freely allowing guests to touch certain artefacts often garners some criticism from the locals, but with some attractions drawn from all over the world, it’s a far more broad and memorable historical aside than you might expect to find tucked away in rural Kerry.