Kilkenny Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Kilkenny Castle stands on a height commanding a crossing of the River Nore and overlooking the upper town of Kilkenny. Founded by the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century, it owes its first stone castle to William Marshal in the early thirteenth century, before becoming in 1391 the seat of the Butlers, earls, then dukes and marquesses of Ormonde, who occupied it for almost six hundred years. The present building layers many periods: medieval round towers, an early eighteenth-century classical projecting wing, the battlements of William Robertson's reconstruction (1826–1837), and the Victorian picture gallery by Deane and Woodward, with a painted ceiling by John Hungerford Pollen. The castle endured the Cromwellian siege of 1650 and the fighting of the Civil War in 1922. Emptied of its furnishings in 1935, it was sold in 1967 for the symbolic sum of £50 by the 6th Marquess of Ormonde. Restored by the Office of Public Works, it is today one of the most visited monuments in Ireland, with its furnished rooms, its gallery and its extensive park.