Barntown Castle - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

The Irish National Heritage Park is an open-air museum near Wexford which tells the story of human settlement in Ireland from the Mesolithic period right up to the Norman Invasion in 1169. It has 16 reconstructed dwellings including a mesolithic camp, a neolithic farmstead, a portal dolmen, a cyst grave, stone circle, medieval ringfort, monastic site, crannóg and a Viking harbour.

A linear trail first established in 1998 to commemorate the bicentenary of the 1798 Easter rising, it has now received a full makeover and is a most enjoyable hike. This trail leads the walker along part of the route traversed by the Wexfordmen/Pikemen during the 1798 Rebellion and passes alongside historical and archaeological landmarks, a number of which are listed monuments. There is a mixture of terrains such as country roads, pedestrian footpaths, forestry roads.

Forth Mountain is a rock outcrop rising to a height of 780 feet just south west of Wexford town. No other mountain in Ireland can boast of 500-600 million-year-old rock, a pivotal location in the 1798 Rebellion, the remains of houses built in the early 1900s, a grotto, and a climb of almost 235m high.

A beautiful park which was opened in May of 1931 as a memorial for Wexford-born politician and soldier, Major Willie Redmond. The park has a number of benches and picnic tables; including this make-shift chair, which was carved from the stump of a tree.

Selskar Abbey is a 12th-century structure that replaced a pre-Christian temple dedicated to Odin. The complex, which is part of the Westgate Heritage Tower, was the location where the first Anglo-Irish treaty was signed. This ecclesiastical site would have overlooked the River Slaney at the time, as the land past Redmond Square was not reclaimed until later years.

The National Opera House is Ireland’s first custom-built, multi-purpose opera house and home to the world-famous Wexford Festival Opera. It consists of the 771 seat O'Reilly Theatre and the smaller Jerome Hynes Theatre, seating up to 176. It was designed and built by the architect Keith Williams Architects with the Office of Public Works.