Cill Iníon Léinín · Co. Dublin
A hill, a bay, a road with expensive houses on it, and a view of Wales on a clear day. Come for the walking.
Killiney is known to Dubliners as the expensive hillside suburb between Dalkey and Shankill - the place with the bay views and the celebrity residents and the Vico Road that anyone who has driven it remembers. It is known to visitors, when it is known at all, as the hill with the 1742 obelisk and the panoramic view of Killiney Bay, the Wicklow Mountains, and on a clear day the mountains of Wales.
The obelisk was built by John Mapas, a local landowner, during the famine of 1740-41, as a relief project to give local families paid work and income. The inscription reads: 'Last year being hard with the poor, walks about these hills and this were erected by John Mapas, June 1742.' The park was gifted to the public in 1887 as a Jubilee memorial. It is still free, still open, still largely as it was.
The rest of Killiney is residential - DART commuter territory, with a station on the seafront and a beach ten minutes' walk below it. The FitzPatrick Castle Hotel is on the hill above, an 18th-century castle building with views over the bay. The Vico Road connects Killiney to Dalkey and is worth walking or cycling if you don't mind a gradient. The famous residents - Bono, Enya, Van Morrison have all lived here - are behind walls and hedges. They are not the destination. The view is.
