Kilkenny

Ireland's finest medieval city, packed into a single mile on the river Nore, that was for a time the effective capital of the country. It grew around a church of Saint Canice and a castle of the Anglo-Norman Butlers, Earls and Dukes of Ormond, who ruled here for six centuries, and in the sixteen forties it became the seat of the Confederation of Ireland before Cromwell took it. The Medieval Mile runs from the Butler castle on its terrace up past a Tudor merchant's house and the friars' Black Abbey to the round tower and cathedral of Saint Canice. Behind it wind the narrow slips of a city that staged one of the first witchcraft trials in Ireland and brewed the ale that carried its name. Read the medieval capital at your own pace.