The building that named the city
Cill Chainnigh – the church of Canice – is where Kilkenny gets its name, and this is the church. St Canice’s is the oldest building in the city and, after St Patrick’s in Dublin, the second-largest medieval cathedral in Ireland. It has stood on this rise at the north end of the Medieval Mile since the thirteenth century, on ground where Christians have worshipped since the sixth.
If you do one thing here, climb the round tower. It is one of only three in the country you can go up – the others are at Kildare and Devenish in Fermanagh – and 100 feet up you get a view over the medieval streets, the Bishop’s Palace and the River Nore that no other vantage in Kilkenny matches. Be honest with yourself first: it is a hundred-odd steps up steep timber ladders in a dim, narrowing shaft, under-12s aren’t admitted, and it is no place for anyone uneasy with heights or tight spaces.
History
Canice himself (c. 521–599) was a friend of Colmcille and founded his monastery not here but at Aghaboe, 30km north; Kilkenny grew up around the later cathedral named for him. The present building went up between 1202 and 1285 and has survived remarkably whole, which is why it reads so clearly as thirteenth-century work. It has not had a quiet life. The central tower collapsed in 1332 – the same year the moneylender Alice Kyteler’s witchcraft trial was convulsing the town – and in 1650 Cromwell’s forces smashed much of the interior. A long nineteenth-century restoration put it back together.
Today St Canice’s is the mother church of the United Dioceses of Cashel and Ossory and one of six cathedrals in that grouping.
Inside
Walk the length of the nave and the tombs do the talking. The black-limestone monument to Honoria Grace dates to 1596; the 1539 tomb of Piers Butler and his wife Margaret Fitzgerald is the grandest of the Butler memorials, the dynasty that ran Kilkenny Castle just down the hill. The great east window is a nineteenth-century replica of the thirteenth-century original, and there is glass from the Harry Clarke Studio to seek out. In the library sits the Red Book of Ossory, a fifteenth-century manuscript.
The detail worth crossing the floor for is the model of Kilkenny as it looked in 1642, before Cromwell – every street and building, laid out so you can find where you’re standing.
Music and events
The acoustics are the cathedral’s second life. The Kilkenny Arts Festival brings chamber concerts and choirs into the nave every August, and there are evening concerts through the year. Choral evensong runs on Sundays except during the June-to-August break.
Practical information
- Hours – October to April, Monday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, closed Sunday; May to September, Monday to Saturday 9am to 6pm, Sunday 1pm to 6pm. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing.
- Tickets – sightseeing from €6.50; the cathedral-and-tower combination is €12. Worship is free. Tours run first-come, first-served, so queues build at busy times.
- Getting there – The Close, Coach Road (R95 V63H). On-site parking is very limited; leave the car in the John Street or Castle car parks and walk. City buses 1, 2 and 3 stop nearby. The nicest approach is on foot from Parliament Street, over Irishtown Bridge and up St Canice’s Steps, which have been there since 1614.
- Access – nave and aisles are level and partly wheelchair accessible; the tower is not.
Nearby
A five-minute walk south brings you to the Black Abbey, a well-kept 13th-century Franciscan friary, and beyond it Kilkenny Castle. The cobbled Medieval Mile runs between the two, taking in Kyteler’s Inn and the Medieval Mile Museum.
Go on a weekday morning if you can, and go up the tower before the tour groups arrive – it is the one thing here you’ll remember longest, and the queue for it is the only real bottleneck in the visit.