Built for the Earls of Dunraven between 1832 and 1862 to designs attributed to the English architect James Pain and later refined by P.C. Hardwick, the Gothic Revival manor on the banks of the River Maigue in County Limerick is among Ireland's most architecturally serious country houses — a limestone pile of turrets, oriel windows, gargoyles, and a great hall whose ambition rivals anything produced by the Victorian aristocracy in Britain. Adare Manor converted to a hotel in 1988 and underwent a transformative €60 million restoration and expansion completed in 2017, nearly doubling room count to 104 keys while preserving the integrity of the original structure. The interiors sustain the house's period weight without retreating into fusty pastiche. Guest rooms in the original manor carry Flemish tapestries as headboards above mahogany beds, Waterford crystal chandeliers dropping into coffered ceilings, and leaded mullioned bay windows framing the Robert Trent Jones Snr.-designed championship golf course beyond. The lodge wing rooms, by contrast, take a lighter touch — damask wallpapers, tufted armchairs, swagged curtains in sage and ivory. The restaurant, housed in a glassed barrel-vaulted addition, sets ebonised wall panelling and burgundy leather banquette seating against the blue glow of a central lantern roof, contemporary without disrupting the property's governing mood. The lounge, with its warm timber panelling, deep crimson velvet chairs, and brass pendant lighting, carries the atmosphere of a private members' library rather than a hotel lobby.

25min drive from Shannon airport (SNN)

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