Castletown House

Castletown House at Celbridge is the largest and earliest Palladian country house in Ireland, built from 1722 for William "Speaker" Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and the wealthiest man in Ireland of his day. The central block was designed by the Italian architect Alessandro Galilei; the curved colonnades and terminating wings were added by the young Irish architect Edward Lovett Pearce, who effectively introduced the Palladian style to Ireland.

The interiors are the draw: the cantilevered staircase with rococo plasterwork by the Lafranchini (Francini) brothers, the Long Gallery decorated in the Pompeian manner, and the print room — the only intact 18th-century print room surviving in Ireland, its walls papered with carefully arranged engravings. The house is managed by the OPW and shown on a tour. Two estate follies were commissioned by Speaker Conolly's widow, Katherine, to give famine relief work in the 1740s: the obelisk known as the Conolly Folly, and the Wonderful Barn.

The 120-acre parklands along the River Liffey are free to enter and are heavily used by walkers and runners from the surrounding commuter towns — the long avenue, the riverside paths and the view to the Conolly Folly make a fine walk independent of the house tour. Castletown is about 25 minutes west of Dublin city and makes a straightforward half-day; a house tour and a parkland loop fill a morning comfortably.