Kilkenny Castle

I had the whole day to savour the city, and filled it with lots of touristy things, including a tour of Rothe House and Kilkenny Castle. Both were wonderful, but the castle was epecially good. A lot of work has been done since I was there before, and it's been brilliantly successful, but painstaking efforts going into the preservation and reconstruction work. I only found two mentions of cost among the excellent information boards, which came to some two and a half million euro, but the total cost must have been much more than that. One example of the lengths the restoration went to in a search for authenticity was with the curtains in the drawing room. They managed to track down the original manufacturers, who had a record of the job and were able to reproduce the fabric again. The new curtains are now a highlight of the newly furnished and decorated room. Similar thoroughness went into other aspects of the work. How ever much it all cost, it was worth every single euro.

I was far from alone while visiting the Castle. This group outside didn't actually take the tour, but they added a certain something to the atmosphere generally.