In December 2016, National Geographic Traveller named Donegal the number one coolest destination of 2017. Pat Riddell, editor of the magazine, explained the choice this way: it's a warm-hearted place, but wilderness always feels just a stone's throw away. And it is wilderness, he added, world-class wilderness. The town of Donegal itself is small, perhaps 2,500 people, gathered around a triangular town square called The Diamond. But from the 15th to the early 17th century, this was the capital of Tyrconnell, a Gaelic kingdom ruled by the O'Donnell dynasty, one of the great royal families of Gaelic Ireland. The name Donegal means fort of the foreigners, a memory of the Viking presence that once made this corner of Ulster a frontier between worlds.
For more than two centuries, Donegal was the seat of one of the most powerful families in Ireland. The O'Donnells ruled Tyrconnell, the kingdom that occupied most of what is now County Donegal, and from the 15th to the 17th century they led the resistance to English colonisation. Their original homeland lay further north around Kilmacrennan, but they made Donegal their administrative centre. The town contains Donegal Castle, built by Hugh Roe O'Donnell the First around 1474. It also contains the ruins of Donegal Abbey, founded the same year by his wife Finola O'Brien. Castle and abbey together once anchored a kingdom that fought England to a near-standstill, lost in the end, and survived in cultural memory as a touchstone of Gaelic identity. Disney made a film about it in 1966 called The Fighting Prince of Donegal, romanticising Hugh Roe O'Donnell's escape from Dublin Castle as a young man.
In September 1607, the leaders of the Gaelic resistance gave up. Rory O'Donnell, the first Earl of Tyrconnell, along with Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and roughly ninety followers sailed from Rathmullan, north of Donegal, into exile in continental Europe. They had been weakened by years of war and were facing the slow but methodical destruction of the Gaelic order. The Flight of the Earls effectively ended Gaelic Ireland's political independence. The English Crown promptly seized the castle and lands at Donegal and granted them to Captain Basil Brooke, an Englishman, as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Brooke reconstructed the castle in the Jacobean style around 1611, added a new wing, and laid out the current plan of the town including The Diamond, the triangular town square that still serves as Donegal's centre.
After the gunpowder explosion that destroyed Donegal Abbey in 1601, the Franciscan friars regrouped at Bundrowes in Bundoran. Between 1632 and 1636, four of them sat down and assembled the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, better known as the Annals of the Four Masters. The chief author was Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, working with Cú Choigríche Ó Duibhgeannáin, Fearfeasa Ó Maol Chonaire, and Cú Choigríche Ó Cléirigh. The compilation gathered every available antiquarian manuscript, monastic chronicle, and oral tradition into a single chronological history of Ireland from the legendary period of the Deluge through 1616. The Four Masters Memorial stands in The Diamond today. St Patrick's Church of the Four Masters, designed by the Dublin architect Ralph Henry Byrne in a mixed neo-Irish Romanesque and neo-Gothic style, was completed in 1935 and is dedicated to the four scribes whose work made medieval Ireland legible to the modern world.
The town has a long tradition of weaving. Donegal Carpets have been hand-made in Killybegs, twenty-five kilometres west, for over a hundred years. The weavers there have produced carpets that now hang in Áras an Uachtaráin, the Irish president's residence, in the University of Notre Dame, and in the White House. The town also has a long history of clothing manufacture, though most of that workforce has declined in recent decades. One survival is the tailor David Hanna, who started making suits for locals in 1924, switched in 1964 to making only hats, and now ships them all over the world. The boutique-scale survival of Donegal craft against the larger collapse of Irish manufacturing has become part of the town's identity.
Donegal railway station opened on 16 September 1889 and closed for good on 1 January 1960. The line had been part of the County Donegal Railways narrow-gauge network, one of Ireland's most beloved lost railway systems. The original station building still stands and now houses the Donegal Railway Centre, a small museum dedicated to the line's history. The site itself is used as a bus depot by CIÉ. The town also hosts motor sports of a very different kind. On 1 February 2009, Donegal Town was the venue for the final stage of the World Rally Championship. The roads around Donegal, twisting through the Blue Stack Mountains and along the coast, have made the area a long-standing favourite for rally drivers.
Donegal Town sits at the southern end of a coastline National Geographic called world-class wilderness. Within an easy drive are some of the best beaches in Ireland: Murvagh, with its long arc of sand, and Rossnowlagh, beloved by surfers for its consistent Atlantic swells. The Blue Stack Mountains rise immediately north of town, offering hill walking, peat bogs, and views as far as Donegal Bay and the Atlantic. Nearby Letterkenny offers larger town amenities, but most visitors come to Donegal for its smaller scale. The Köppen climate classification for the area is Cfb, a marine west coast climate, which means mild differences between summer and winter temperatures, and adequate rainfall throughout the year. The wilderness Riddell described in National Geographic is not metaphor. It is what you see when you step outside the town boundary in almost any direction.
Located at 54.65 degrees north, 8.12 degrees west, in County Donegal, Ireland, on the banks of the River Eske where it enters Donegal Bay. Recommended viewing altitude 2,000 to 4,000 feet above terrain. The town sits in a sheltered position with Donegal Bay to the south and west, the Blue Stack Mountains to the north, and the Atlantic visible from higher altitudes. Donegal Castle on the riverbank and the Four Masters Memorial in The Diamond are key visual landmarks. Nearest airports: Donegal (EIDL) immediately to the north, Sligo (EISG) to the south, City of Derry (EGAE) to the northeast. Atlantic weather brings frequent rain and strong westerlies, especially in winter; summer can bring spectacular light over Donegal Bay.