The Irish Aesthete: Buildings of Ireland, Known and Unknown

Since 2012, Robert O’Byrne’s Irish Aesthete has shed fresh light on Ireland’s architectural inheritance. In this new volume, Buildings of Ireland: Known and Unknown, he turns his discerning eye to a remarkable selection of sites in the care of the Office of Public Works.

 From celebrated landmarks like Castletown House and the Rock of Cashel to lesser-known ruins tucked down quiet boreens, these pages uncover a country layered with memory: grand houses and fragile abbeys, castles and gardens, round towers and forgotten churches. Some are familiar, many are not – but all are open to be seen, and to be understood anew.

 With text and sumptuous photographs by O’Byrne, this book offers more than a guide: it is an invitation to travel, to look closely, and to discover the stories held in stone across Ireland.

‘In putting together the present book, making a selection was perhaps the greatest challenge … my wish is to offer a mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar. This is a personal selection: someone else compiling the book might have made different choices. But it is intended to act as an introduction and a guide to the rich diversity of Ireland’s architectural heritage, a gazetteer that encourages readers to set out on their own voyages of discovery.’