Medieval Irish writers named a handful of hills as the ceremonial seats of kings: Tara for the kings of Tara and the high kingship, Emain Macha for Ulster, Cruachan for Connacht, Dún Ailinne for Leinster and Cashel for Munster, with Uisneach as the meeting point of the provinces. Archaeology shows that most of these hills were in use for thousands of years before anyone wrote about kings. This page keeps the two apart: what has been dug and dated, and what the tales say.
Seat of the kings of Tara; tradition makes it the seat of the High King.
What archaeology shows
About twenty monuments are visible, and at least three times as many have been found by geophysical survey and aerial photography.
The oldest visible monument, the Mound of the Hostages (Dumha na nGiall), is a Neolithic passage tomb built around 3,200 BC; it held almost 300 burials in the Neolithic and a further 33 in the Bronze Age.
A double timber circle about 250 m across was built on the hilltop in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.
Ráth na Ríogh, the big central enclosure, is dated to the 1st century BC. Its ditch is inside its bank. Ráth na Seanadh was occupied between the 1st and 4th centuries AD and has yielded Roman artefacts.
What the tales sayLegend
The Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, was brought to Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann and cried out under the foot of the true king.
Medb Lethderg is named as the sovereignty goddess of Tara; Cormac mac Airt is the ideal king of the tales.
The ‘feast of Tara’ (feis Temro) is recorded in early literature as held at Samhain.
The Wikipedia article quotes John T. Koch: no king was likely to have had enough authority to dominate the whole island before the 9th century, whatever the king lists say. Niall of the Nine Hostages is said to have taken Tara from the Laigin in the 5th century, after which it was the ceremonial seat of the Uí Néill.
Status: A protected national monument in the care of the Office of Public Works. On UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010, as part of ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’ (not an inscribed World Heritage Site). · Source ↗ · Tentative list ↗
Traditional capital of the Ulaidh, who gave Ulster its name.
What archaeology shows
Flint tools and pottery show activity in the Neolithic.
In the 8th century BC a ring of timber posts 35 m across stood where the mound is now; in the 4th century BC a figure-of-eight timber building replaced it.
In the 1st century BC a timber building 40 m across was put up on the same spot around a great central oak post. Tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) puts the felling of that post at 95 BC.
Not long after, the building was filled with stones to nearly 3 m, deliberately burnt, and buried under the earth mound that stands today. The great bank and ditch round the hill, with the ditch inside, seems to have been dug about the same time.
What the tales sayLegend
In the Ulster Cycle it is the court of Conchobar mac Nessa, with the hall called Craebruad, the home of the Red Branch, Cú Chulainn and Deirdre.
The name is explained by two tales of Macha: a queen who marked out the rampart with her brooch, and a woman forced to race the king’s horses who gave birth to twins at the finish line and cursed the men of Ulster.
The Annals of the Four Masters say the Three Collas burned Emain Macha in 331 AD; another tradition blames Niall of the Nine Hostages or his sons a century later. Neither is supported by excavation.
What the burning of the 95 BC building meant is not known. The ideas in the Wikipedia article (a sacrifice to the gods, a temple given to the Otherworld, a platform for inauguration) are interpretations by individual archaeologists, not findings.
Status: A State Care Historic Monument in Northern Ireland. It is not on the Republic’s UNESCO tentative list, though that entry says Navan Fort can be viewed as one of the same group. · Source ↗
Identified as Cruachan, traditional capital of the Connachta.
What archaeology shows
More than 240 archaeological sites across a landscape of roughly 6 square kilometres, from the Neolithic to the medieval period; 60 are protected national monuments.
The central Rathcroghan Mound is about 89 m across and 5.5 m high, built on top of an older monument of two stone ring banks, inside a surveyed enclosure 360 m across.
At Dathí’s Mound, charcoal from a limited 1981 excavation gave a building date between 200 BC and 200 AD. That is centuries before Dathí is supposed to have died, around 429 AD.
An ogham inscription in the souterrain at Oweynagat reads VRAICCI MAQI MEDVVI, ‘of Fraech, son of Medb’.
What the tales sayLegend
The royal seat of Queen Medb and Ailill, where the Táin Bó Cúailnge begins with their pillow talk and ends with the fight of the bulls at Rathnadarve.
Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats, is an entrance to the Otherworld, linked to Samhain and to the Morrígan.
A dindshenchas poem names Cruachan after Crochen, handmaid of Étaín.
National Geographic, quoted in the Wikipedia article, calls it possibly ‘Europe’s largest unexcavated royal complex’. Most of it has been surveyed rather than dug, so most dates are not yet known.
Status: 60 of its sites are protected national monuments. On UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010, as part of ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’ (not an inscribed World Heritage Site). · Source ↗ · Tentative list ↗
Believed in the early medieval period to be where the kings of Leinster were inaugurated.
What archaeology shows
A circular enclosure of about 13 hectares covering the hilltop, with the ditch inside the bank.
Excavated 1968 to 1975 by a University of Pennsylvania team under Bernard Wailes: three phases of timber building in the Iron Age, one with a figure-of-eight plan, the last marked by feasting and a large amount of animal bone.
The earliest signs of use are Neolithic; the main activity was in the Iron Age. It does not seem to have been lived in all year round.
What the tales sayLegend
The tales make it a great royal site of Leinster. The Wikipedia article stresses that they were written long after the site was in use, and that its link to the early medieval kings is unclear.
Nothing is visible on the ground today. A 2009 geophysical survey found many new buried features whose nature is unclear.
Status: On private farmland, with no public access; ask the landowner. The article gives no national monument status. On UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010, as part of ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’ (not an inscribed World Heritage Site). · Source ↗ · Tentative list ↗
Seat of the kings of Munster before the Norman invasion.
What archaeology shows
Few remains of the early royal site survive; most of the buildings are 12th and 13th century church buildings.
The round tower, about 28 m high, dates from about 1100. Cormac’s Chapel was begun in 1127 and consecrated in 1134; the cathedral was built between 1235 and 1270.
What the tales sayLegend
Local legend says the Rock fell from the Devil’s Bit, 30 km north, when St Patrick drove Satan from a cave there.
The Tripartite Life of St Patrick makes Cashel the place where Patrick converted the king of Munster in the 5th century.
The Eóganachta held Cashel from the 5th century, according to the Wikipedia article. It says Brian Boru was crowned there in 977, and that in 1101 Muirchertach Ua Briain gave the Rock to the Church. Unlike the other sites, Cashel’s royal story is mostly early medieval rather than prehistoric.
Status: In State care and run by the Office of Public Works as a Heritage Ireland site. On UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010, as part of ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’ (not an inscribed World Heritage Site). · Source ↗ · Tentative list ↗
The symbolic centre of Ireland, where the provinces were said to meet.
What archaeology shows
About twenty monuments are visible and at least twenty more have been found under the ground, over two square kilometres: a probable megalithic tomb, burial mounds, enclosures, standing stones, holy wells and a medieval road, from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages.
Excavations in the 1920s by R. A. S. Macalister and R. Praeger at Rathnew found pits of part-burnt animal bone and a large ash bed, read by the excavators as a place of fire and sacrifice. A figure-of-eight earthwork was built there later, in the early medieval period.
The Cat Stone (Ail na Míreann) is a glacial erratic almost 6 m tall, ringed by a prehistoric bank.
What the tales sayLegend
The burial place of gods such as Lugh and the Dagda, and the site of the great assembly (mórdáil Uisnig), which later tradition places at Bealtaine.
The druid Mide lit a fire there that burned for seven years. The goddess Ériu met the Milesians there and is said to lie under the Cat Stone.
Geoffrey of Monmouth says Stonehenge first stood on the ‘hill of Killare’, thought to be Uisneach.
The tales link Tara with royal power and Uisneach with spiritual power. The Wikipedia article says the road called Slighe Assail joined them; see the ancient roads page.
Status: A protected national monument. On UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010, as part of ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’ (not an inscribed World Heritage Site). · Source ↗ · Tentative list ↗
Assembly place of the kings of Tara at Lughnasadh, not a royal seat.
What archaeology shows
The mounds near Teltown date to at least the Iron Age, according to modern archaeological reports cited in the Wikipedia article. Part of one, at the Knockauns, was bulldozed in 1997.
The National Monuments Service records a ceremonial enclosure at Tailtin (record ME017-027).
What the tales sayLegend
Tailtiu, foster-mother of Lugh, cleared the forest there for crops and died of the effort; Lugh held funeral games in her honour, which became the Óenach Tailtenn and gave Lughnasadh its name.
In historical times it was where the principal assembly of the early Uí Néill was held. The Tailteann Games of the 20th century were a revival named after it. The 19th-century claim that the fair was an Irish ‘Olympic Games’ is John O’Donovan’s comparison, not evidence.
Status: The articles give no national monument status beyond the National Monuments Service record. Not on the UNESCO tentative list. · Source ↗
Seat of the Kingdom of Ailech, the Northern Uí Néill.
What archaeology shows
A stone fort (cashel) on Greenan Mountain, 244 m, inside three earthen banks. The Wikipedia article gives two dates for the stone fort: the 6th or 7th century in one place, probably the 8th century in another.
Brian Lacy suggests the earthen banks may be a hillfort of the late Bronze Age or Iron Age, older than the stone fort.
What stands now is largely Walter Bernard’s reconstruction of the 1870s, modelled on Staigue Fort in Kerry. The original drystone courses that survived were marked in tar.
What the tales sayLegend
The site has much legend attached; the Wikipedia article does not set it out in detail, so we do not either.
The annals record its destruction in 1101 by Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of Munster. The Cenél nEógain moved their seat to Tulach Óg (Tullyhogue) early in the 11th century.
Status: Protected as a national monument. Not on the UNESCO tentative list. · Source ↗
Quick answersWhat are the royal sites of Ireland?
The six most often named are Tara in Meath, Emain Macha (Navan Fort) in Armagh, Rathcroghan in Roscommon, Dún Ailinne in Kildare, Cashel in Tipperary and Uisneach in Westmeath. Lesser royal and assembly sites include Tailtiu (Teltown) in Meath and the Grianán of Aileach in Donegal.
Are the royal sites a World Heritage Site?
No. Cashel, Dún Ailinne, Uisneach, Rathcroghan and Tara have been on UNESCO’s tentative list since 2010 as ‘The Royal Sites of Ireland’. A tentative listing is a step before nomination, not an inscription. Navan Fort, in Northern Ireland, is not on that list.
How old is Navan Fort?
There was activity there in the Neolithic, and timber structures from the 8th century BC. The great central post of its largest building was felled in 95 BC, a date fixed by tree-ring dating.
Were the royal sites forts?
Probably not. At Tara, Navan Fort and Dún Ailinne the ditch is inside the bank, which is the wrong way round for defence. The Wikipedia articles describe them as ceremonial enclosures.
Each site name links to the Wikipedia article its facts come from. Dates are given only as those articles give them. Where an article reports one archaeologist’s reading of a site, we say so.
Gaps: the UNESCO site blocked our reader, so the tentative listing is taken from Wikipedia’s list, which cites the UNESCO entry. We found no stated national monument status for Dún Ailinne or for Teltown beyond its National Monuments Service record. The Grianán article gives two different dates for the stone fort. Lesser royal sites such as Tullyhogue, Clogher, Knowth and Magh Adhair are left out.