Cork City Gaol

Add a trip to Cork City Gaol to your list of top things to do in Cork. Cork City Gaol is one of Cork’s top visitor attractions suitable for both families and couples. The Gaol once housed 19thC prisoners.

Visitors get a fascinating insight into day-to-day prison life at a time when the high walls ensured no escape and denied law-abiding citizens the opportunity to see one of the finest examples of Ireland’s architectural heritage.

Countess Markievicz, n Irish politician, revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist, socialist, the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament, was arrested in 1919 and charged with making a seditious speech or, in her own words, “advising girls not to walk out with the police and a few other remarks of that sort”. She was sentenced to 4 months in Cork City Gaol and she stated that it was the most comfortable jail she had ever been in! While she was in the Gaol she wrote letters declaring how good the people of Cork were during her imprisonment. “The Cork people spoil me dreadfully. Such fruit and flowers all the time.”