Renaissance Galway: delineating the seventeenth-century city (Irish Historic Towns Atlas)

Renaissance Galway is the next ancillary publication from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas. The subject of the book is the remarkable ‘pictorial map’ of Galway, which was produced in the mid-seventeenth century.It offers a bird’s eye view of Galway city at this time and presents insights into the cultural, sociopolitical and religious outlook of the local ruling elite - the so-called ‘tribes’ of Galway. Originally intended as a wall hanging, it was produced to impress and remains a centrepiece of Galway’s visual history. Only two copies of the original printed map are known to exist and it is the well-preserved version from Trinity College, Dublin that is reproduced in Renaissance Galway.Following the format of previous map-guides from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the book presents carefully selected extracts from the pictorial map, each accompanied by a commentary.These range from descriptions of particular buildings or areas, to aspects of everyday life that are revealed in the map.