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Dublin Environs

Dublin Environs Travel Guide

Like an open-air museum layered with legendary Celtic sites, grand gardens, and elegant Palladian country estates, the small counties immediately north, south, and west of Dublin—historically known as the Pale—seem expressly designed for the sightseer. Due to its location on the Irish Sea, facing Europe, the region has always been the first to attract conquerors, and the first over which they exercised the greatest influence. Traces of each new wave remain: the Celts chose Tara as the center of their kingdom; the Danes sailed the Rivers Boyne and Liffey to establish many of today's towns; and the region's great Protestant-built houses of the 18th century remind us that the Pale was the starting point and administrative center for the long, violent English colonization of the whole island. More »

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