Our guide to luxury holidays in Ireland

Ireland is famed for its festivals and celebrations. The most significant being Saint Patrick's Day, a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March to commemorate the death of Ireland’s foremost patron saint. The streets are awash with green, and this iconic celebration of Irish culture involves parades, traditional dancing, folk music and feasts.

Held over two weeks in July, the Galway International Arts Festival is one of Ireland’s largest arts festivals, with live theatre, music, dance, visual arts, and street spectacles attracting crowds from across the globe.

Every October, the city of Cork plays host to the Cork Jazz Festival. There are over 90 venues – from concert halls to pubs – where visitors can watch traditional jazz, swing, and blues performances.

Traditional Irish cuisine includes dishes such as Irish stew, colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale), boxty (a potato pancake, typically served with bacon and fried eggs, or sour cream and spring onions) and soda bread (every family cherishes their own time-honoured recipe, but this dense, unleavened bread is always served sliced and spread liberally with Kerrygold).

Surrounded by abundant seas and verdant farmland, Ireland enjoys some of the finest meat, dairy products, and seafood around (including Galway native oysters, Connemara clams, and Dublin Bay prawns), with a current total of 21 Michelin-starred restaurants across the country.

Ireland is a popular filming location for many famous TV shows and movies. Cross the border to Northern Ireland to spy scenes from Game of Thrones along the Causeway Coast, or trek the iconic landscapes of Skellig Michael, Malin Head, and Dingle Peninsula, as featured in the Star Wars franchise. The Cliffs of Moher have starred in many movies; most famously, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, while the backdrop to Oscar-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin can be found along the Wild Atlantic Way (with panoramic shots of Inis Mór and Achill Island stealing the spotlight – and film critic’s hearts, too).

There are many ways to get to Ireland from the UK, including:

By air: Ireland has several international airports, with Dublin Airport being the busiest and most well-connected, followed by Shannon and Cork. Aer Lingus, Ryanair, easyJet and British Airways operate direct and regular flights between London and Ireland with a travel time of around an hour.

By sea: There are many popular ferry connections between the UK and Ireland. The most popular routes run from ports in England, Wales, and Scotland – such as Liverpool, Fishguard, Holyhead, and Cairnryan – to ports in Dublin, Belfast, and Rosslare. While flying might be the quicker option, the car ferry is scenic, cost-effective and enables you to bring the whole kit and caboodle (be that surfboards and SUPs or four-legged friends ready for adventure).