Bagenal's Castle and Newry Museum

Bagenal's Castle is now home to Newry and Mourne Museum, which means you get the Tudor stronghold and a free local museum in one visit. The collection covers the town's monastic origins, the canal era, the linen trade, and the more recent Troubles, with some surprisingly good displays.

The building itself is the real draw. The Tudor staircase, fireplaces, and gun-loops are unusually intact for Ireland, partly because of the centuries spent walled inside a later structure. The museum is on McCann's Bagel Bakery's old site on Castle Street and is normally open Tuesday to Saturday.

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A story
Bagenal's Castle was built in 1568 by Sir Nicholas Bagenal, the Marshal of the Queen's Army in Ireland, on the site of a Cistercian abbey he had dismantled for the stone. The building was then forgotten — for centuries it sat hidden inside a bakery on the same street, only rediscovered in 1996 when the bakery closed and a survey of the walls revealed the Tudor tower house still intact within them.