Things to do in Monaghan
Monaghan is a small town and you can see the centre of it in an afternoon. What it has that similar towns do not is a genuinely good county museum, a large forest park almost within walking distance, and a working theatre. That is enough for a full day, and more if the weather holds.
Monaghan County Museum
The museum moved in the summer of 2025 from its old home on Hill Street into the Monaghan Peace Campus on the north side of town, sharing the building with the town library. It is free to get into.
It is a proper county museum rather than a room of farm implements. The collection runs from the Bronze Age through the plantation and the border years, and the permanent exhibition that opened with the move deals directly with what living beside a border has meant here. If you have half an hour in Monaghan and no plan, go here. Details and current opening times are on the museum’s own pages.
Rossmore Forest Park
Rossmore is on the Cootehill road, a couple of kilometres south west of the town, and it is the best thing within five minutes of Monaghan. Coillte manage it with the county council. There are marked walks from about a kilometre up to eight, lakes, a yew avenue, a walled garden, a large playground and usually a coffee hut at the car park.
The house itself is gone. Rossmore Castle was the Westenra family seat, was abandoned after the Second World War and was pulled down in the 1970s. What is left is the terrace and some stonework in the trees, which is worth finding.
Bring boots. The paths are good but this is drumlin country and it holds water.
The town’s four squares
The centre of Monaghan is four linked squares, and walking between them is the town’s own short tour.
- Church Square has the courthouse, finished in 1830 to a design by Joseph Welland, and St Patrick’s Church of Ireland. The memorial to the seven people killed in the 1974 bombing stands in front of the courthouse.
- The Diamond has the Rossmore Memorial, an ornate 1876 drinking fountain of grey marble columns under a spire. It is much bigger than the space really wants, which is part of its charm.
- Old Cross Square has the Old Cross, a seventeenth century stone that stood in the Diamond until the Rossmore Memorial displaced it in 1876.
- Market Square has the Market House of 1792, a limestone building that is the handsomest thing in the town.
Trips.ie has a walking route through the town that links the squares with St Macartan’s Cathedral and the older lanes, if you want the walk laid out for you rather than working it out from a map.
St Macartan’s Cathedral
Begun in the 1860s and finished at the end of that century, this is a large neo-gothic cathedral on high ground on the Clones road, and it is visible from most approaches to the town. The interior is worth going in for, particularly the stone carving.
The Garage Theatre
The Garage Theatre is on the Armagh Road, part of the education campus. It has a 289 seat auditorium, a smaller studio, a gallery and a bar, and it runs a mixed programme of touring theatre, music, comedy and film through the year. For a town this size, having a venue of this standard is unusual.
What is on
Monaghan has a farmers market in Church Square, and the town runs the usual round of a St Patrick’s Day parade, summer festivals and a busy autumn arts programme. Because dates move, the sensible thing is to check a listing rather than trust a fixed calendar. What is on across County Monaghan is kept current.
Within a short drive
- Glaslough, ten kilometres north east, a former Tidy Towns national winner, with Castle Leslie and its grounds.
- Sliabh Beagh, twenty minutes west on the Tyrone border, with walking and cycling trails through blanket bog and forestry.
- Armagh, half an hour, with two cathedrals and a planetarium.
- Lough Muckno at Castleblayney, twenty minutes south, the largest lake in the county.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.