Galway

Why Galway works

Galway earned its "City of the Tribes" nickname from the fourteen merchant families who ran its medieval trade with Spain and France, and the Spanish Arch, a surviving fragment of the old city walls by the harbour, is a direct legacy of that trade. The city's Latin Quarter, a tangle of narrow lanes around Quay Street and Shop Street, is where Galway's reputation for live music is earned nightly — traditional Irish sessions spill out of pub doorways, often unplanned, whenever a fiddle or bodhrán player wanders in. The Corrib River rushes through the city centre from Lough Corrib to the bay, popular with salmon in season and lined by the colourful Long Walk terrace of harbourfront houses, a favourite photo spot at sunset. Galway's real pull for most visitors, though, is what lies beyond it: the Cliffs of Moher, rising 214 metres sheer from the Atlantic, are an hour's drive south, while the wind-scoured bogs, loughs and Twelve Bens mountains of Connemara stretch west, Ireland's most rugged and Irish-speaking landscape. The Aran Islands, reachable by ferry, preserve a slower, Irish-speaking way of life largely unchanged by the mainland, with stone forts and dry-stone walls crisscrossing the fields.

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