Long before the GAA, Thurles was Durlas Éile - the Strong Fort of Éile - and the territory it ruled stretched from Croghan Hill in Offaly down toward Cashel. The Eli, a half-legendary tribe, gave their name to it; by the 8th century the O'Fogartys, a branch of the Éile, held what is today the barony of Eliogarty. The town name carries them: Durlas Éile Uí Fhogartaigh, the Strong Fort of the O'Fogartys of Éile. When the Normans pushed inland late in the 12th century, the O'Donoghues lost ground to the Butlers - who became the Earls of Ormond in 1328 and the dominant family in Tipperary for the next four hundred years. Two of their fortresses still stand inside the town: the Black Castle near the centre and the O'Fogarty Castle by the Suir. The annals of the Four Masters mention lords of Dearlas dying in battle from the late 9th century onward.

The 1884 meeting at Hayes' Hotel had been called by Michael Cusack, a Clare-born schoolmaster who had grown weary of watching Irish field sports die out under the weight of English cricket and rugby. Maurice Davin chaired the gathering and became the first GAA president. By the next decade the new association had organised hurling and Gaelic football across every parish that would have it. Semple Stadium, just outside the town, became the GAA's second-largest venue - 45,690 capacity, second only to Croke Park in Dublin - and the spiritual home of Munster hurling. In 1984, on the centenary of the founding, the All-Ireland Hurling Final was deliberately played back at Semple to close the circle. On Munster final days the population of Thurles doubles before lunch.

When the bishops of Cashel fled the Rock during the Reformation, they eventually came to Thurles. After the Penal Laws relaxed, the Roman Catholic archbishop chose to make his seat here rather than return to the contested rock outside town. The Cathedral of the Assumption, begun in 1865 and consecrated by Archbishop Thomas Croke in 1879, stands in the middle of Thurles with a facade modelled on the cathedral at Pisa. J.J. McCarthy designed it; the tabernacle inside was carved by Giacomo della Porta, who studied with Michelangelo. The rose window and free-standing baptistery give the interior something Italian, but the cold limestone tells you exactly where you are. Croke himself - patron of the GAA, friend of the new Irish national movement - lies buried inside.

For seven summers between 1990 and 1997 Thurles meant something quite different. Semple Stadium hosted Féile - the Trip to Tipp - and at peak it drew an estimated hundred thousand young people for a long weekend. The Cranberries played. Blur played. The Prodigy and Rage Against the Machine, Van Morrison and Bryan Adams - all queued through Liberty Square to a stadium normally booked for Munster hurling. The festival ended in 1997 but was revived in 2019 with Sinéad O'Connor on the bill. Thurles also runs an arts festival every Halloween. The Source Arts Centre, opened in 2006, took the place of the old library; it now houses both.

Horse racing has gone on in Thurles since 1732. The current racecourse, an oval right-handed track a mile and a quarter round with a steep uphill finish, runs National Hunt fixtures through the winter and flat racing later. The town has produced more hurlers than any rural town has earned the right to claim - Séamus Callanan, Lar Corbett, Jimmy Doyle - and one of the more unlikely entrepreneurs of modern Ireland: Tony Ryan, who founded Ryanair and is buried not far from where he was born. The actress Kerry Condon grew up here. So did Una Healy of The Saturdays, the poet Dennis O'Driscoll, and Paddy Ryan, who in 1882 became the bare-knuckle heavyweight champion of the world. The schools - Thurles CBS, the Ursuline and Presentation convents, the Mary Immaculate campus at the old St. Patrick's seminary - have kept turning out new generations of all of the above.