The Top Museums to Visit in Ireland

Voted Ireland’s number one museum in the 2016 TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards, and a previous winner of Best International Museum at the UK’s Museum and Heritage Awards for Excellence, Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, opened in 1832, offers a fascinating insight into Irish history.
It was one of the first burial grounds to open after the repeal of a law forbidding Irish Catholics from burying their dead in their own cemeteries. The very man who fought to repeal that law, political leader Daniel O’Connell, is now buried here, along with other well-known cultural and revolutionary figures such as Michael Collins and Constance Markievicz. The museum’s ‘Milestone Gallery’ contains the life stories of 200 people buried here.

A key attraction in Ireland’s oldest city, The Medieval Museum lies in the award-winning cultural area of Waterford known as the Viking Triangle. The only medieval museum in the country, it’s home to artefacts such as The Great Charter Roll of Waterford (1373) and Europe’s only complete set of medieval cloth-of-gold vestments. The museum also holds two original medieval chambers within its limits, reached via a spiral staircase dating back to the 13th century.

The Little Museum of Dublin is worth visiting for the location alone – it sits inside a beautifully appointed Georgian townhouse on St. Stephen’s Green – but its exhibitions illuminating the rich history of the city are the real attraction. Current exhibits include one dedicated to the development of the GAA (Gaelic Athletics Association) in Dublin and another that takes a close look at the city’s most famous band, entitled U2: Made in Dublin.

Opened in 2012, the vast Titanic Belfast is one of Ireland’s newer attractions but has already been hugely successful, attracting more than 800,000 visitors during its first year and being named Europe’s Leading Visitor Attraction at the prestigious World Travel Awards in 2016.
Built on the site where the ship itself was constructed prior to its ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage, the impressive, angular exhibition space holds within it nine interactive galleries, all reflecting on the history of one of the most famous maritime disasters in the world.