Qualla: Galway City Museum

Galway City Museum: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royalcladdagh, CC BY-SA 3.0. The museum sits beside the Spanish Arch, a piece of the medieval city wall that once kept Cromwell and the Atlantic out, more or less in that order. The current building opened in 2007 - an L-shaped, three-storey limestone-and-glass affair designed by Office of Public Works architects Ciaran O'Connor and Ger Harvey, who won the Bank of Ireland Opus Architectural Award for it the same year. Inside: medieval stones, the civic sword of King James I, fishing boats from the Claddagh, a Connaught Rangers regimental record, and a chalice made by the man who is said to have invented the Claddagh ring. Free entry. Open most days.

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Image: Royalcladdagh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Galway City Museum: Comerford House and Clare Sheridan

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 瑞丽江的河水, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum did not begin in 2007. It began in 1976, in Comerford House - a Georgian property built around 1800 that the Comerford family donated to Galway City Council. Between 1948 and 1954 the house was lived in by Clare Consuelo Sheridan, who is a sufficiently strange figure t...

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Image: 瑞丽江的河水 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Galway City Museum: Galway Within the Walls

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. The permanent exhibition Galway Within the Walls is the heart of the museum - the story of the medieval merchant city that prospered through Atlantic trade, especially with Spain. Among the holdings: the Atty Doorway from 1577, two intact stone fireplaces, one from the Slate Hous...

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Image: Sarah777 | Public domain

Galway City Museum: Sword and Mace

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mohd Fazlin Mohd Effendy Ooi, CC BY 2.0. On loan from Galway City Council are the city's two most important ceremonial objects. The Civic Sword dates from the Charter of King James I in 1610, which authorised the carrying of such a weapon before the mayor of Galway. The Civic Mace was manufactured in Dublin in 1710 and ...

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Image: Mohd Fazlin Mohd Effendy Ooi | CC BY 2.0

Galway City Museum: Richard Joyce's Chalice

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Jpatokal, CC BY-SA 4.0. On loan from the Dominican Order of Nuns in Galway is a collection of eighteenth-century church silverware - chalices, candlesticks, a host box, an altar frontal, and a reliquary casket of St Ursula. The reliquary was made by Richard Joyce. The Galway tradition holds that Joyce i...

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Image: User:Jpatokal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Galway City Museum: Fishing Boats and Magdalene Receipts

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MaxPride, CC BY-SA 3.0. The maritime collection holds the boat-building tools of John Reney, the last of the Claddagh's boat builders, whose yard once stood right where the museum now sits. Fishing boats, navigation books, an Aldis lamp for signalling. The Claddagh collection preserves apron and shawl -...

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Image: MaxPride | CC BY-SA 3.0