Ireland's second city and proudest — the Rebel County that once declared independence from Dublin, where the English Market is the finest Victorian covered market in the British Isles and Blarney Castle promises eloquence to anyone who bends over backwards for a 600-year-old stone
Cork is Ireland's second-largest city (220,000 in the metro area) on the River Lee, the capital of County Cork in Munster, and self-styled 'real capital of Ireland.' The English Market (established 1788, covered hall 1862) is a Victorian iron-and-glass food market that the late Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2011 — a diplomatic landmark given the history — and which TV chef Rick Stein called the best market in Ireland and the UK. The city centre sits on an island between two channels of the Lee, giving Cork its distinctive character of bridges and quays. Blarney Castle (14km from the city cent…
Corcaigh (Irish: 'marshland') grew from a 6th-century monastic settlement founded by St Finbarr on a marshy island in the River Lee. The city was a Viking trading port from the 9th century, then a Norman walled town. Cork's reputation as the 'Rebel County' began in the 15th-century War of the Roses, when the city supported the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck against Henry VII; the nickname was reinforced by fierce opposition to British rule in the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), when the city's Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney died on hunger strike in 1920. Cork was the first city to send…