Ashtown Castle
A 15th-century tower house that spent roughly 200 years sealed inside a Georgian mansion — only found when demolition crews tore the walls down in 1978.
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The castle dates to the 1430s and was built to exact dimensions set by a government scheme that paid £10 to anyone who raised a castle for personal safety. It later disappeared entirely into Ashtown Lodge, the official residence of the Under Secretary from 1782, and was only rediscovered when dry rot made the Lodge irreparable. Now restored inside the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, it is the accidental survivor of two buildings.
What to look for
- The tower's proportions — deliberately sized to comply with the 1430s government grant policy
- The point where the medieval masonry meets the later Georgian construction that swallowed it
- The Visitor Centre exhibition tracing Phoenix Park history from 3500 BC to the present
The Visitor Centre is directly beside the castle and has a café on the grounds — useful after the walk in from the park gates.
Ashtown Castle is one of 35 sights worth the detour in Dublin, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Dublin pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Dublin
- Aviva StadiumOne 51,711-seat bowl jointly owned by rugby and football — two governing bodies, one ground, no separate home for either.
- Dublin CastleThe river that gave Dublin its name still flows beneath your feet — and the building above it ran Ireland for 750 years.
- Croke ParkThe fourth-largest stadium in Europe holds 82,300 people — almost entirely for sports most of the world has never watched.
- National Library of IrelandIreland's paper memory — manuscripts, photographs, and newspapers free to open on the spot.
- St Patrick's CathedralIreland's national cathedral has never had a bishop — that role belongs to the rival church 400 metres up the road.
- Spire of DublinA 120-metre stainless-steel pin planted on the exact spot where an IRA bomb in 1966 — and a controlled demolition six days later — erased Nelson's Pillar.