Historic Sites 28 places that trace 5,000 years of Irish history

This is El Velo de Irlanda's broadest category, and for good reason: it brings together 28 places that, between them, span nearly all of Ireland's documented history. It starts with Neolithic passage tombs over 5,000 years old and the fossilised farmland of Céide Fields, one of the best-preserved prehistoric agricultural landscapes in Europe. It continues through the early Christian monasteries — Glendalough, Clonmacnoise, Monasterboice — that made Ireland a center of learning during the European early Middle Ages, and extremes like Skellig Michael, a monastery built on a rock jutting out of the open Atlantic.

Later come the Norman castles turned seats of power, the battles that decided the island's political fate — like the Boyne — and, in the 20th century, places like Kilmainham Gaol, the Dublin prison where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed and which is today one of the most visited symbols of Irish independence. Several of these sites overlap with the Mythology or Stone Circles categories — Newgrange and Tara, for instance, are both archaeological monuments and legendary settings — because in Ireland, documented history and mythic memory rarely travel alone.