The Glucksman

Wide-ranging museum depicts the city's history from prehistoric to modern times. There's a good section on Michael Collins and the anti-Treaty Cork Brigades of the Irish civil war.

Saint Fin Barre (550-623 AD) was a preacher who spent his last 17 years hereabouts. A monastery dedicated to him was built in the 7th century, and there have been at least three churches on the site before the present building. This is an elaborate Church of Ireland (Anglican) cathedral built 1865-79 in Gothic Revival style. The interior is relatively small: Burgess the architect realised it would go way over budget so the focus was on creating a grand frontage, to impress the citizens and overawe the resurgent Catholics. There are three great spires, intricate carvings and gargoyles, stain glass windows, and a high ceiling over a rather stubby nave. The pipe organ adds to the cathedral's many expensive items of construction and maintenance.

Fascinating jail museum. It was opened in 1924 to hold male and female prisoners of the city, while those whose crime was committed outside the city were held at the county jail across the river, now the UCC campus. In 1878 the prisons were segregated: City Gaol became the women's prison and all the men were marched away to the county jail, while all county women were marched here. In 1919 Countess Markiewicz was held here for making a seditious speech; after Irish independence it held anti-treaty Republicans. In 1923 there was a mass escape, thereafter the gaol closed. In 1927 it became a radio station and part of the museum displays this.

The original fort built in 1601 was just timber and earth, and the citizens made short work of it. It was rebuilt from 1624 as a stout "star" fortress. It lost its defensive role in 1719 but was variously used as a barracks, a depot for convicts (mostly female) awaiting transportation to the colonies, and a police station to 2013. It's now simply a tourist area with a gallery and occasional events, and you can walk along the walls.

Honora Nagle (1718-1784) pioneered Catholic education for girls in an era when that was repressed by the Penal Laws. She founded an Ursuline convent and the Presentation Sisters, which inspired Edmund Rice in Waterford to found the Presentation Brothers and later Christian Brothers. The museum depicts Nano's life, times and works, and the garden is an oasis of tranquillity.

Shandon is the neighbourhood climbing the hill along the old road to Mallow. This Church of Ireland (Anglican) church was built in 1722; the famously inaccurate clock on its tower became known as "the four-faced liar". The church is best known for the eight "bells of Shandon that sound so grand on / the pleasant waters of the River Lee" as the 19th century ballad has it. (Who but Francis Mahony aka "Father Prout" would have dared rhyme Moscow with kiosk-o?) St Anne's bells are hung "dead" and rung by an Ellacombe apparatus. The most sonorous peel of bells is from change-ringing, which rotates them through 360°, but this demands skill and is sometimes impractical to build. It also incites scandalous behaviour, according to the Rev Henry Thomas Ellacombe of Gloucestershire, who in 1821 devised a mechanism whereby hammers struck stationary bells as resolutely as they would strike down temptation to sin. St Anne's is one of the two dozen churches in Britain and Ireland that still have functioning apparatus, and visitors can ding the bells from the tower first floor. There are 132 steps to the tower balcony, with a narrow squeeze as you clamber through the belfry, hoping that the group below doesn't choose that moment to start chiming.