Grafted onto an older riverside castle, Ormond Castle is Ireland's finest Elizabethan manor house — built in 1565 by Thomas "Black Tom" Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, as a tribute to his cousin Queen Elizabeth I.
The rooms are reached by guided tour only, departing at regular intervals and lasting up to 40 minutes. Guides cover the parlour, the new dining chamber, the Long Gallery, the earl's chamber, the east tower and the attic.
At 33 metres this is one of the earliest and finest long galleries in Ireland, famous for its decorative plasterwork portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and King Edward VI and Tudor emblems.
The Elizabethan range fronts an earlier medieval riverside castle with two 15th-century towers. The grounds sit on the Suir Blueway, a flat riverside route for walking and cycling.
Two seven-minute films contrast Black Tom's viewpoint with that of his English wife, Elizabeth Berkeley. Subtitles are available in Irish, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.
Touch-screen storybooks tell the castle's story, the people who lived here and the OPW restoration, alongside a model of how the castle looked at its height.
Alongside the paintings and tapestries, look for the oak bed dating from 1606 and a Queen Anne period cradle.
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