Book County Kildare tours & attraction tickets

County Kildare sits immediately west of Dublin, separated from the capital by little more than the River Liffey's upper reaches, yet it occupies a world of its own. The county is defined above all by its flatlands, the great limestone plain of the Curragh stretching across its centre like a green table, cropped short by the sheep and racehorses that have grazed it for centuries. That openness is not emptiness; it is the reason Kildare became the thoroughbred capital of Ireland and, by many measures, one of the most important centres of horse breeding in the world.

The town of Kildare itself carries a history that reaches back to the sixth century, when Saint Brigid founded her monastery on this plain and gave the county its name, Cill Dara, the church of the oak. The round tower that still stands in the town is among the finest in Ireland, and the medieval cathedral beside it has been rebuilt and repaired across so many centuries that it reads almost as a compressed architectural history of the island. Racing, however, is what draws most visitors who are not making a pilgrimage of the ecclesiastical kind. The Curragh Racecourse hosts all five Irish Classic races, and on the days it runs, the county takes on a particular atmosphere that is difficult to find anywhere else in the country.