☰Eyre Square

Eyre Square is the main public square of Galway, an open park at the top of the city centre that serves as the natural starting point for exploring. The square combines a formal park with a series of significant monuments — the Browne Doorway (a seventeenth-century carved stone door frame, rescued from the demolition of a merchant's house), the Quincentennial Fountain with its rust-coloured sails referencing the Galway Hooker fishing boats, and Kennedy Memorial Park.

The surrounding streets — William Street, Williamsgate Street — connect the square to the pedestrian heart of the city. The square is functional rather than beautiful, its best quality being the human activity around it at all hours. On a summer evening it fills with families, buskers, and the particular energy of a city that is comfortable outside. The train and bus stations are at the eastern end of the square, making it a natural arrival and departure point.