Thurles Information

The Cashel Palace Hotel in Cashel, Co Tipperary has been named on Condé Nast Traveler’s Gold List 2024 as one of the best hotels and resorts in the world. View HERE.

Now in its 30th year, Condé Nast Traveler Gold List, is an annual miscellany of the very best hotels and resorts in the world, highly recommend by the luxury travel publication’s global editors.

The only hotel in Ireland to make the list, this newly-renovated 300-year-old Cashel Palace Hotel can be found situated at the base of the 12th-century Rock of Cashel, [E25 EF61], latter one of Ireland’s most historic sites and well known to visitors for its pencil-shaped round tower, Cathedral and Romanesque chapel.

Palladian in style, Cashel Palace hotel’s red brick facade contrasts with its limestone rear, and while the rear aspect of the building mirrors the front; the use of different materials makes it rare for a building of this period. Now newly and fully restored by the Coolmore Stud thoroughbred-training family, latter governed by Mr John Magnier, this Palladian manor is truly “a must visit”.

The building was initially designed as the residence for the Church of Ireland Archbishop Theophilus Bolton, in 1732, and designed by one of the pre-eminent architects of that period, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), latter one of the most celebrated architects of the time, who in 1720 designed Dublin Castle; – in 1726 Drumcondra House; in 1727 the Obelisk, Stillorgan, Dublin, and in 1728 designed Dublin’s impressive Parliament House – now the Bank of Ireland* in College Green, Dublin.

*[A wit then quipped, on August 24th 1802 when the Bank took possession of Parliament House, “Since to a Bank, as ‘tis asserted, our House of Commons is converted; what most we want will be there, in place of what we best can spare.”]

It was in the 20th century that this bishops palace was first turned into a hotel, which then boasted such former guests as Miss Elizabeth Taylor and the late US President Mr Ronald Regan.

Condé Nast Traveler Gold List refer to the staff as “a well-oiled team that’s worked together for years”, and the buildings welcome being “as warm as the toasty log fires” in the “hotel’s woodsmoke-scented entrance hall”.