Waterford

Waterford lies on the south bank of the river Suir, where Vikings returning in 914 founded what became Ireland's first city, and its name comes from Old Norse for the 'ram fjord'. Strongbow's Norman forces and Diarmait Mac Murchada, the deposed King of Leinster, took it in 1170 after a desperate defence, and Henry II of England landed here in 1171, after which Waterford and Dublin were declared royal cities. Reginald's Tower, which kept its Viking name, was among the first buildings in Ireland to use mortar.

Throughout the Middle Ages Waterford was Ireland's second city after Dublin. In the fifteenth century it beat off the sieges of two pretenders to the English throne, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, and Henry VII rewarded it with the motto Urbs Intacta Manet Waterfordia, 'Waterford remains an untouched city'. The city stayed Catholic through the Reformation and joined the Confederation of Kilkenny, the independent Catholic government of 1642 to 1649, until Cromwell's son-in-law Henry Ireton took it in 1650 after two major sieges. In 1690 the Jacobite Irish army surrendered Waterford after the Battle of the Boyne. The eighteenth century was a time of great prosperity, when many of its best buildings went up.