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KILKENNY
is Ireland's finest medieval city. Above the broad sweep of the River Nore sits the castle, while a pretty, humpbacked stone bridge leads up into narrow, cheerful streets laced with carefully maintained buildings. Kilkenny's earliest settlement was a monastery founded by St Canice in the sixth century, but all that remains from those days is the round tower which stands alongside the cathedral. The city's layout today owes more to its medieval history. Following continual skirmishes between local clans, the arrival of the
Normans
in 1169 saw the building of a fort by Strongbow on the site of today's castle. His son-in-law, William Marshall, consolidated Norman power in Kilkenny, maintaining the fortified city and keeping the indigenous Irish in an area of less substantial housing, beyond its walls - of which only the name "Irishtown" remains. In 1391, the Butler family acquired Kilkenny Castle and so ensured the city's loyalty to the English Crown.
In the mid-seventeenth century, Kilkenny virtually became the capital of Ireland, with the founding of a parliament in 1641 known as the
Confederation of Kilkenny
. This attempt to unite resistance to the English persecution of Catholics was powerful for a while, though its effectiveness had greatly diminished by the time Cromwell arrived - in his usual destructive fashion - in 1650. Kilkenny never recovered its former prosperity and importance. The disgrace of the Butler family in 1715, coupled with English attacks upon the rights of Catholics through the Penal Laws, saw the city decline still further, though the towering mill buildings on the river banks are evidence of a considerable industrial history.
Enough medieval buildings remain to attest to Kilkenny's former importance, however, and in a place brimming with civic pride, there's been a tasteful push towards making the town a major tourist attraction. Kilkenny is sometimes known as "the marble city" because of the limestone mined locally, which develops a deep black shine when polished. Echoing this, the town's bar and shop signs all gleam with black and brown lacquer, the names cut in deeply bevelled, stout gold lettering
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