Galway City Museum, Galway (must see)

By the old Spanish Arch, once part of the Galway city walls, overlooking the river Corrib, is the Comerford House. The house was built in 1800. It was originally the home of the Comerford family. It afterward passed to the Greenwood family. Between 1948 and 1954 it was the residence of sculptor and writer Clare Consuelo Sheridan.

The house became the home of the Galway City Museum in 1976 while a part of Galway Corporation. The first exhibition of the museum was a collection of medieval stones, folk and military objects collected by Clare Sheridan before she died in 1970. The exhibits of Galway continued to grow and Comerford House became too small to hold it all.

In 2007 a new museum building was opened behind the Comerford House. The Galway Museum project building was designed by architects Ciaran O'Connor and Gar Harvey. It is located behind the old Comerford House on the River Corrib beside the Spanish Arch. There is a plaza between the museum and the Arch which is often a venue for public happenings.

The overall shape of the museum is an "L" form. The building has three levels to blend with the scale of other buildings in the area. The new building houses the earlier collections and new acquisitions. Most of the Comerford collection consisted of nearly 1,000 historical items collected over a period of thirty years.