The memorial garden on Market Street stands where the Real IRA bomb detonated on 15 August 1998, killing 29 people and injuring over 200 others. It was the deadliest single atrocity of the Troubles and, grimly, came after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, intended by its perpetrators as an act of opposition to the peace process.
The garden is a quiet and dignified space: a reflecting pool, 29 glass pillars representing the dead, and a stone engraved with their names. It does not editorialize. People leave flowers and sit here; the town has neither erased the memory nor allowed itself to be defined solely by it. Omagh has rebuilt itself with some determination since 1998, but the garden is a necessary counterweight to that forward movement.