Thurles

Displaying memorabilia of the GAA and Gaelic games, but it's chiefly a merchandising outlet for club colours. It also houses the Tourist Information Centre.

The original cathedral of the diocese was on the Rock of Cashel, but that was grabbed by the Protestants at the Reformation. As elsewhere, the Catholics weren't allowed to build their own churches until the Penal Laws were relaxed. This Italianate Romanesque cathedral was built over earlier chapels and completed in 1879, with an impressive rose window and baptistry, and white marble altar. The high-domed tabernacle is by Giacomo della Porta, a pupil of Michelangelo; it came from the Gesu Church in Rome. The cathedral's eight bells can be dinged by hammer but not change-rung, for fear of bringing the campanile crashing down.

St Mary's is a "First Fruits" church built in 1825 over a Norman ruin — see County Tipperary for more on this initiative to build more Protestant churches in Ireland. It remains in occasional use as a Church of Ireland church and its ground floor has a small museum about the Great Famine. A "Sheila na Gig" from elsewhere in town is also here. The church is seldom open.

The round tower was built in 1495, the rest is a modern mock-castle mansion. Much of the place is now artisan shops selling their own porcelain and knitwear. Castle tours are available.

Small museum of Irish country life.

Impressive abbey founded for the Benedictines in 1168 but affiliated to the Cistercians from 1182 and extended 1400-1450. Much of what you see now is a 20th-century reconstruction of the abbey church, which in 1975 became the Roman Catholic parish church. It's long been a pilgrimage site, as it claims to hold fragments of the "True Cross." The first was probably bestowed by the King of Limerick at the 1182 Cistercian launch; his family had received it from Pope Pascal II. (Other accounts credit Queen Isabella, widow of King John, in 1233, but by then she was out of favour and busted to being a mere Countess.) In the 15th century the fragment was set in the silver Ormond Reliquary. The abbey was ruined at the Reformation but the relic remained, and continued to draw pilgrims; it was a money-spinner for the village. At the 1975 re-opening, the Vatican provided a second fragment, set in a golden Cross of Jerusalem. This was stolen in 2011 but the police recovered it; perhaps it was too recognisable to be sold, and no arrests were made. The abbey is in a picturesque village with a medieval river bridge.

1848 saw rebellions all across Europe, and in the aftermath of the Great Famine, the Young Irelander Rebellion was staged here. A contingent of 47 police approached the flag-waving rebels, but found themselves outnumbered and bolted into this farmhouse, within which were five children. A stand-off turned into a shoot-out, "The Battle of Widow McCormack's cabbage plot". Two rebels were fatally shot but the police were sheltered, and when their reinforcements came, the rebels fled. Several were convicted and transported to Bermuda; others escaped to France or the US.

Racing every Saturday from 7:30PM.