The history of Limerick, stretches back to its establishment by the Vikings as a walled city on King's Island (an island in the River Shannon) in 812, and its charter in 1197.
A great castle was built on the orders of King John in 1200. It was besieged three times in the 17th century, resulting in the famous Treaty of Limerick and the flight of the defeated Catholic leaders abroad. Much of the city was built during the following Georgian prosperity, which ended abruptly with the Act of Union in 1800. The depression was to last nearly two centuries, through the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849), Irish War of Independence, and neutrality emergency of the second world war, until the economic boom from the 1990s until 2008. Today the city has a growing multicultural population.
Read more about History Of Limerick: Name, Early History, Viking Origins, Siege and Treaty, Georgian Limerick and Newtown Pery, Great Irish Famine, Pogrom, Struggle For Independence, Free State, The Emergency, Post War, Celtic Tiger, Annalistic References
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“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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“Galway is a blackguard place,
To Cork I give my curse,
Tralee is bad enough,
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Which is worst I cannot tell,
They’re everyone so filthy,
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Worst luck to Clonakilty.”
—Anonymous. “Clonakilty,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)