Kilmainham Gaol is an essential stop for anyone who wants to learn about the complex history of Ireland’s fight for independence. This historic jail once held the most famous military and political leaders in Irish history.
It became a symbol of the nation’s struggle. Countless Irish men and women sacrificed their freedom—and, in many cases, their lives—for the cause of Irish independence from the English.
A visit to Kilmainham Gaol offers a powerful glimpse into the harsh realities faced by those imprisoned, and executed, within its walls.
As you walk through the dim, echoing corridors and stand in the cold, cramped cells, you can almost feel the weight of history surrounding you.
The experience will deepen your understanding of this national monument’s significance and its profound place in the Irish soul.
Quick Tips
- You can’t visit without pre-booking a timed entry ticket. Access is by guided tour only.
- Tickets are extremely hard to come by. They are released 28 days out at midnight Ireland time. You must set a reminder to buy them or you will be out of luck.
- If you can’t get a ticket, keep checking back for cancellations.
- The guided tour lasts about 1 hour.
- After the tour, you can visit the museum.
- The gaol is a couple miles west of central Dublin and you can walk there in about 40 minutes. There are taxis outside the gaol if you don’t want to walk back.
- It’s an old building, so there are stairs, uneven steps, and low doorways.
Mini History Of Kilmainham Gaol
So why is this jail so famous and a shrine in Irish history?
The gaol was opened in 1796 on a site know as Gallows Hill.
It was intentionally made to look as grimly foreboding as possible. Today, it’s one of the largest unoccupied prison facilities in Europe.
Above the entry door are the Five Devils of Kilmainham, five hissing snakes chained by the neck to represent evil under strict control.
At the time, there were executions every couple months. They were public too, so gawkers could gawk. These were moved inside in 1865.
The gaol’s early days were exceedingly squalid. Victorian Dublin was a place of crowded unsanitary slums, mass unemployment, rampant disease, alcoholism, child abuse, and early death.
The gaol was an all purpose prison for all types of malefactors. The only purpose was confinement, not reform.
At that time, most of the prisoners were debtors or guilty of petty theft, not hardened criminals. Men, women, and children were crammed together in a cell, sometimes 3-5 of them at once.
The prison’s youngest prisoner was either 3 or 7 years old. (I was told conflicting things.) Kids were usually put in the slammer for extremely minor crimes like stealing a loaf of bread.
The prison was as horrific as you can imagine. Neglect was the norm and beatings were commonplace.
The jailers, or turnkeys, were corrupt and biddable.
They often exacted a fee upon entry, fees for favors, and an exit fee. If you were poor, you were stuck with the worst of the worst as you had no money for bribes.
There are essentially two parts of the gaol — the oldest part with narrow, dank, and dark cells and the Victorian wing with a barrel vaulted skylight.
The prison took in leaders of 5 different rebellions — 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1916, the War of Independence (1919-20), and the Civli War (1922-23). The list of inmates is a who’s who of Irish history:
- Charles Stewart Parnell: a leading Irish nationalist political leader and the founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party;
- Robert Emmet: a famous orator and leader of the 1803 rebellion against British rule;
- Eamon de Valera: one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising who was a key political leader in the fight for Irish independence and served as Prime Minister and President of Ireland;
- James Connolly: a socialist and one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising executed by firing squad;
- Patrick Pearse: a leading figure in the 1916 Easter Rising and one of the main authors of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic;
- Joseph Plunkett: another key leader of the 1916 Easter Rising who married his fiancee Grace Gifford in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol just hours before his execution.
- Constance Markievicz: an Irish revolutionary, suffragist, and nationalist, who became the first woman elected to the British Parliament
The 1916 Easter Rising was the first proclamation of Irish independence, made outside the General Post Office building.
After the Rising, the British sentenced 90 men to death. Ultimately, a firing squad executed 14 of them for treason in the Stonebreaker’s Yard.
The prison was closed in 1924. After a period of abandonment, it was superbly renovated, turned into a museum, and reopened to the public in 1966.
The abandoned prison has an eerie and sacred beauty, with its unique architecture and storied past.
It’s now one of the top tourist attractions in Dublin. And, as I said, it’s hard to get tickets for!
Guide To Kilmainham Gaol: What To See
Chapel
You start in the chapel with a short film about the jail and its prisoners.
West Wing
Then, you head to the oldest part of the prison, the West Wing, dating from 1796.
There are long corridors with tiny rooms. They were meant for one prisoner, but sometimes held many more because of overcrowding.
You can step into a couple cells or peep through spy holes, imagining you’re an insurgent or vagrant kept in such horrific conditions.
The cells were very cold. Prisoners were given straw beds or metal cots and a meager bread-based diet.
During the potato famine, conditions were even worse.
Vagrancy was made a crime. Some people committed crimes just to have any chance of a meal insider the jail.
1916 Corridor
This corridor was where prisoners were held before execution.
There are plaques above the doors with their name and graffiti on the walls.
This is where you’ll find the cells of several key figures of the Easter Rising.
The Easter rebels weren’t what you think of as revolutionaries. They were poets, academics, and artists with a dream of a better future without being under the thumb of British imperialists.
Charles Parnell’s Cell
You’ll be able to step inside the cell of Kilmainham’s most famous prisoner, Charles Parnell.
He was a wealthy and privileged prison. He became the leader of the Irish Parliamentary party and uncrowned king of Ireland. In jail, he could wear his own clothes and eat what the governor ate.
A contemporary mural depicts him sitting in a comfy chair chatting to a lady friend before a blazing fire.
Such was his stature that the British government negotiated with him in prison. This resulted in the “Kilmainham Treaty,” which won concessions for Irish tenant farmers.
Kilmainham didn’t just hold Parnell either. They heldd captive his followers and supporters. Kilmainham effectively became a repository for nationalist talent, a finishing school of sorts.
East Wing
From the gloomy West Wing, you emerge into the frigid light of the Central Hall. It’s a horseshoe-shaped structure built during the Victorian era in 1962, which has been used in quite a few films.
The premise for building the new wing was to separate men and women. In the Victorian era, it was scandalous for the sexes to be promiscuously mixed.
Naturally, when the new wing opened, the women were left behind in the creeky old West Wing and men were given the relative luxury of the new quarters.
The new wing was part of a reform movement.
It finally dawned on philosophers and officials that dumping offenders in a filthy hole might not remedy the situation. Another epiphany was that malevolent criminals should be separated from those that were mentally ill.
In this wing, 100 cells are stacked in four tiers, under a barrel vaulted skylight. They look inward toward iron catwalks and stairs.
The acoustics were excellent. If you stand in the central viewing platform, like a guard, you can see all the cells — the embodiment of control.
Wardens even muffled the walkways with carpet so prisoners never knew they were being observed.
Each cell had a small window or skylight. Light was thought to rehabilitative and lead to self-contemplation and self-reform. Only the “punishment” cells were devoid of light.
You can walk into several of the cells. One cell has a fresco painted by Grace Plunkett in 1923, the Madonna and Child.
She married Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, in the jail’s tiny chapel.
They spent 10 minutes together, supervised by British guards.
Two hours later, her bridegroom was shot for treason. She later landed in jail for drawing political cartoons and never married again.
Their tragic love story has become a symbol of the personal sacrifices made for Irish freedom.
Exercise Yard
Outside, you walk through a grim gray enclosure that was an exercise years.
Prisoners could walk 1-2 hours per day in a circle, with their head down and no talking.
This was where one of the prison’s most daring escapes occurred in 1921.
With parts smuggled in from sympathetic British soldiers, 3 men escaped by assembling bolt cutters and slipping through the gates, their cells conveniently left open.
The original gates and locks are in the museum.
Stonebreaker’s Yard
As you move on, you will stand in the most resonant, chilling place on the tour — the Stonebreaker’s Yard. This was the very spot where convicts would break stones for hard labor.
After the Easter Rising was suppressed, this was also where 15 of the Easter Rising leaders were executed, one by one, by British firing squads.
One rebel, James Connolly, was injured and couldn’t stand. He was shot sitting tied to a chair and blindfolded.
Today, a cross marks the spot of their execution and their names appear on a plaque in the courtyard.
The executions ignited public outrage.
As with previous rebellions, the movement’s real significance lay not in its military achievement but in its symbolic power.
Initially, the notion of Irish independence was met with healthy skepticism and deemed a bit cheeky. But the rebels’ “blood sacrifice” quickly turned public opinion in favor of their cause.
The British effectively made martyrs out of rebels. It was incredibly stupid politics.
If the Rising had never happened, the history of Ireland would be different. Instead, an old order died, launching a transformative time for Ireland.
In a compelling phrase in his great poem Easter 1916, W.B. Yeats wrote, “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
A striking sculpture representing those executed, complete with bullet holes, sits across the road from the gaol.
As Winston Churchill once said, “Grass grows over a battlefield, never over a scaffold.”
Museum
You end your visit in the museum, which is fittingly industrial style black and gray. It’s laid over two levels.
You’ll get the entire history of the jail, its famous inmates, and the Irish rebellions that created a free nation. There are artifacts, photographs, and detailed infographics.
There are also multi media guides. You can even peak in to see a poor prisoner in solitary confinement.
I would plan to budget at least an hour here to read all the info.
Practical Guide & Tips For Kilmainham Gaol
Address: The jail is in an inner suburb of Dublin, Kilmainham, at Inchicore Road 8.
Hours: Open year round (except December 24-27) from 9:30 am to 5:15 pm (last tour 4:15 pm).
Parking: Kilmainham Gaol has no car parking facilities. Parking is available at the nearby Irish Museum of Modern Art/Royal Hospital Kilmainham – access via East Gate, Military Road.
Tickets:
The ticket price is 8 euros, quite reasonable I thought. You can only buy a ticket on the official website. The jail doesn’t sell tickets through third party vendors like Get Your Guide.
In fact, the gaol says: “Tickets bought from other sites, including ticketing resale platforms, will not be valid and such ticket-holders will be refused entry.”
If you can’t buy a ticket, keep checking back online for cancellations frequently.
These will be released online between 9:15 am – 9:30 am Ireland time. This was the only way I was able to visit!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to Kilmainham Gaol. You may find these other Ireland and UK guides useful:
- beautiful places to visit in Ireland
- what not to do in Ireland
- 1 day in Belfast itinerary
- guide to St. Patrick’s Cathedral
- 3 days in London itinerary
- 5 days in London itinerary
- best day trips from London
Pin it for later.
