13 Best Sights in The Southwest, Ireland

Fully refurbished and extended with high-spec interactive gadgetry and new displays and a first-rate café, this museum is a worthy stop to discover life on the Blasket Islands (An Bhlascaoid Mhóir), which are among Ireland's most extraordinary islands. The largest visible from Ceann Sléibhe is the Great Blasket, inhabited until 1953. The Blasket islanders were great storytellers and were encouraged by Irish scholars to write their memoirs. The Blasket Centre explains the heritage of these islanders and celebrates their use of the Irish language with videos and exhibitions. The new viewing platform (free) alone makes this center an essential part of the Dingle itinerary.  

First built by the Normans in the early 1200s, King John's Castle still bears traces on its north side of a 1691 bombardment. If you climb the drum towers (the oldest section), you'll have a spectacular view of the city and the Shannon. Inside, an audiovisual show illustrates the history of Limerick and Ireland; an archaeology center has three excavated, pre-Norman houses to explore; and interactive exhibitions include scale models of Limerick from its founding in AD 922.

This ivy-clad Victorian manor is located next door to Killarney National Park Visitor Center. Upstairs, elegantly furnished rooms are stuffed with, in typical Victorian fashion, rugs, animal wall mounts, and idiosyncratic decorative furnishing and, of course---china---which was commissioned for England's Queen Victoria's visit back in 1861. Paintings are original---and include the works of John Butler Yeats (father of artist Jack and poet William) and John Singer Sargent. The upstairs lifestyle of the landed gentry in the 1800s contrasts with the conditions of servants employed in the basement of Muckross House. 

The magnificent informal grounds are noted for their rhododendrons and azaleas, the water garden, and the outstanding limestone rock garden. In the park beside the house, the Muckross Traditional Farms include reconstructed farm buildings and outbuildings, a blacksmith's forge, a carpenter's workshop, and a selection of farm animals. It's a reminder of the way things were done on the farm before electricity and the mechanization of farming. Meet and chat with the farmers and their wives as they go about their work. You'll also find folk displays where potters, bookbinders, and weavers demonstrate their crafts. The visitor center has a shop and a restaurant.

Foynes was the crossroads between American and European skies in the early, glamorous days of flying. In fact, it was on this very site that an innovative chef called Joe Sheridan created the Irish coffee on a chilly night in 1943 to warm the bones of shivering passengers. The airport would soon move across the river to become Shannon Airport, but in that brief period in the middle of the 20th century, this little village welcomed dignitaries like Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, King George of Greece, novelist Ernest Hemingway, and from the golden age of Hollywood, Douglas Fairbanks, Bob Hope, actress Gracie Fields, Bill Rogers, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart. The museum has the only B314 flying boat replica in the world, and it also explores the area's maritime history. There is a café on-site along with an Irish coffee lounge.

Since 1983, Dingle's central attraction, apart from its "trad" music scene, has been a winsome wild bottlenose dolphin who has taken up residence in the harbor. The Dingle dolphin, or Fungie, as he has been named, will play for hours with swimmers (a wet suit is essential) and scuba divers, and he follows local boats in and out of the harbor. It's impossible to predict whether he will stay, but boatmen have become so confident of a sighting that they offer trippers their money back if Fungie does not appear. Boat trips (€16) leave the pier hourly in July and August between 11 and 6, weather permitting.

If someone in your family has ambitions to play sport professionally, this interactive museum will test your budding athlete’s aspiration with an immersive, linear voyage through the steps in that journey. Focused on rugby (it is Limerick, after all) the museum charts the journey from the grass roots of the game, through training and team participation, and culminates in the greatest rugby moments on the global stage. The building has commanding views of the city, a café, and retail---and is bang in the heart of the city.

The subtropical gardens teeming with ferns and exotic plants date from 1838, and have been fully restored and greatly improved by the present owners, Billy and Penn Alexander. The Skywalk rope bridge is the longest in Ireland and takes half an hour to walk. The front-gate waterfall and the giant Chilean wine palm compete for your attention with carved wooden dinosaurs and giant Dicksonia antarctica (Tasmanian fern trees) dating from the 1890s, so allow at least an hour for the rest of the garden. Penn, a former chef, has opened a Thai restaurant that is very popular locally and opens for lunch, dinner, and takeaway. Do not let the rain put you off visiting: Kells receives more than 60 inches of rain annually, and it actually enhances the plants and the waterfall. But do wear sensible shoes as it is usually damp underfoot.

Worth a quick look, this museum, between Glenbeigh and Killorglin on the Ring of Kerry, is a cluster of reconstructed, fully furnished cottages that vividly portray the daily life of the region's agricultural laborers in the early 1800s. The adjacent Red Fox Bar is famous for its Irish coffee.

Tralee's major cultural attraction traces the history of Kerry's people since 5000 BC, using dioramas and an entertaining audiovisual show. There is an excellent display on Tom Crean and Roger Casement, the celebrated humanitarian activist whose brief sojourn in Kerry during Ireland's Easter Rising had a huge impact locally and internationally. You can also walk through a life-size reconstruction of a Tralee street of the Middle Ages.

Hidden away behind tall walls in the center of town for many years, Killarney House is the official visitor center to Killarney National Park. Dating from the early 1700s, the house was originally the stable block of a more imposing manor that burned down in 1913. Today it contains a museum with information about Killarney Town and an interactive exhibition about the flora and fauna of Killarney National Park, as well as changing art exhibits relating to the area. The long-established formal gardens, spread over 30 acres, have been restored to their original 1720s French layout, and are enhanced by the natural backdrop of Killarney's wild mountains under a huge, ever-changing sky. There are easily accessible walks laid out in the grounds, and free guided tours every half hour.

On the coast, Rossbeigh consists of a tombolo (sand spit) of about 3 km (2 miles) backed by high dunes. It faces Inch Strand, a similar formation across the water on the Dingle Peninsula. Popular with families for its safe swimming, it also attracts walkers. Amenities: food and drink; lifeguards; parking (no fee). Best for: swimming; walking.

You reach this roaring, 65-foot-high cascade by a footpath that begins in the parking lot outside the gates of the Muckross Park, 8 km (5 miles) south of Killarney. After your first view of the Torc, which will appear after about a 10-minute walk, it's worth the climb up a long flight of stone steps to the second, less-frequented clearing.