Desmond Castle, Kinsale

A fortified urban tower house in the harbour town, built around 1500 as a custom house for the Earls of Desmond. Over the centuries it served as an arsenal, a prison for captured sailors during the Napoleonic wars, and later a workhouse during the famine. Its thick stone walls and vaulted ground floor now hold a small museum tracing the international wine trade that once passed through the town. The building's grim spell as a jail earned it the local nickname of the French Prison, recalled in exhibits inside.