You’ll find an extremely atmospheric dose of Galway’s earliest years in its lively  Latin Quarter, with cobblestone streets plied by buskers and old houses (some of them original stone) now home to shops, restaurants, cafés, and bars. Among the city centre’s most notable remnants from the Middle Ages are St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, built in 1320 and still Ireland’s largest medieval parish church that’s regularly used; also don’t miss the open-air market outside every Saturday. (Fun Fact No. 1: Christopher Columbus almost certainly worshipped at St. Nick’s on a visit in 1477; there were strong trade links with Spain in those days.) A couple of remnants of the old city walls, the Spanish Arch (picutred here) and the Caoċ Arch, can be found along the riverside, and then there’s Lynch’s Castle on Shop Street, a fortified town house once home to the most powerful of the local medieval ruling families (it’s now home to a bank, and the ground floor is open to visitors).

Read more in my post Galway Is an Irish Charmer - and a 2020 European Capital of Culture.

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