Built around 1500, this limestone fortress has witnessed five centuries of the city’s history, though much of its own story remains tantalizingly obscure. The building you see today is actually two structures merged into one; the original tower-house at the corner was later joined by a western wing, raised to match its height sometime in the seventeenth century. Look closely at the Shop Street facade and you can spot the straight joint where old meets newer, with differently carved hood-moulds above the windows marking the transition.

The castle’s stonework tells fascinating tales through its remarkable collection of carvings. Eighteen water-spouts, nine of them true gargoyles with grotesque human and animal faces, once channelled rainwater away from the building but now serve only as decoration. Three heraldic panels reveal the ambitions and allegiances of its builders: the Lynch family arms displayed with griffin supporters (a presumptuous touch usually reserved for nobility), the royal arms of Henry VII with a Latin inscription proclaiming loyalty to the English crown, and curiously, the Fitzgerald family crest. Below the Fitzgerald arms sits one of the castle’s most intriguing features; a lion-like creature holding what appears to be a child, supposedly commemorating a pet monkey’s heroic rescue of an infant from a fire, though this tale belongs more to folklore than fact.

Originally five storeys tall with gun-loops defending its corners, the castle underwent dramatic alterations in the early nineteenth century when floor levels were changed and Georgian windows inserted. The Munster and Leinster Bank (now Allied Irish Banks) took over in 1918, adding their own touches including new ground floor windows and doors carved by Dublin sculptor Laurence Campbell in 1933. Despite all these changes, you can still trace the building’s medieval bones: look for the blocked-up remains of a grand cusped ogee window between the third and fourth floors, marking where the principal living quarters once were, and the mysterious merchants’ marks in the form of reversed ‘4’s with forked stems, the signature of the wealthy but unknown Lynch who first called this fortress home.