Monaghan is the county town of County Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland, sitting close to the Northern Ireland border in the drumlin-scattered landscape of the Ulster midlands. It is a compact market town built around The Diamond, a diamond-shaped central square — a layout common to Ulster plantation towns — with the 19th-century Gothic Revival St Macartan's Cathedral dominating the skyline from its hill. The town itself is quiet and unpretentious, the kind of place where the locals still do their shopping in the old streets.
The Monaghan County Museum on Hill Street is genuinely worth a visit: it holds the Cross of Clogher, an early medieval processional cross, and a good collection tracing the region's history from prehistory through the linen trade. The surrounding county is better known to anglers than tourists — it is riddled with small glacial lakes that hold good coarse fishing. Rossmore Forest Park, 3 km south, is the easiest place to step into the drumlin landscape that defines this corner of Ireland. Monaghan makes a useful base for anyone travelling between Dublin and Donegal, or for exploring the border country that bears the complicated marks of partition.