Donegal

Donegal's Irish name, Dún na nGall, means 'fort of the foreigners', and there are traces of ringforts and earthworks around the town from prehistoric times. From the 15th to the early 17th century it was the capital of Tyrconnell, the Gaelic kingdom of the O'Donnells, who built their castle on the River Eske and, in 1474, a Franciscan friary on the shore of the bay. The O'Donnells were among the leaders of resistance to English colonisation, and the abbey was used for a meeting with envoys of Philip II of Spain during the Nine Years' War. In 1601 it was wrecked during the Siege of Donegal.

After the Flight of the Earls in 1607 the Crown seized the castle and granted it, around 1611, to Captain Basil Brooke as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Brooke added a Jacobean wing to the castle and laid out the present town plan around the Diamond. Meanwhile the displaced friars kept their scholarship alive, and in 1632–36 Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and his collaborators compiled the Annals of the Four Masters, commemorated today by the obelisk on the square.

From the late 17th century to the early 20th the town belonged to the estates of the Gore family, later Earls of Arran, and took on its present appearance. It sent two members to the Irish House of Commons until 1801. In 1841 it had 1,366 people; the Famine left a workhouse, now part of the hospital, and famine graves. The railway arrived in 1889 and closed in 1960.

The Diamond is the heart of the town, a meeting place for music, poetry and cultural gatherings, and pubs, some with traditional music, stand around it. Donegal is proud of its Gaelic past: the O'Donnells, and above all Red Hugh O'Donnell, whose story inspired many books and films, including Disney's The Fighting Prince of Donegal, and the Four Masters, whose annals are chronicles of medieval Irish history.

Textiles are part of the town's identity. Donegal tweed, woven in the county for centuries from local materials, is with Harris Tweed the most famous tweed in the world, best known as a plain-weave cloth flecked with small pieces of coloured yarn. Like most Irish clothing makers, local firms have shrunk; one tailor who began making suits in 1924 switched to hats in 1964 and now ships them around the world.

Sport is led by Gaelic football, played by the Four Masters GAA club, which is also developing hurling, alongside soccer, rugby, basketball and athletics. The town hosted the final stage of the World Rally Championship in 2009. Faith remains visible, from the Catholic church of the Four Masters to the pilgrimage at Lough Derg near the border.

About 2,700 people lived in Donegal town at the 2022 census. It is neither the county town, which is Lifford, nor the largest town, which is Letterkenny, but it is the market and service centre for the south of the county, with the community hospital, supermarkets and the regional newspapers the Donegal Democrat and Donegal Post. Ocean FM has a studio in the town.

Tourism is a large part of the economy. Visitors use the town as a base for the beaches at Murvagh and Rossnowlagh, the Blue Stack Mountains and the coast to the west, and in 2016 National Geographic Traveller named Donegal the coolest destination of 2017. Traditional clothing manufacture survives on a smaller scale than before.

Life here runs across the border. Without a railway, the town relies on buses and cars, and many routes to Dublin and Belfast pass through Northern Ireland, with no checks at the frontier. A current issue in the county is the defective concrete blocks crisis, which concerns homes built with blocks containing excessive mica.

Donegal's food is that of the north-west coast. Irish cuisine is founded on the crops and animals of a temperate climate and on fish and seafood from the surrounding Atlantic, and chowder is popular around the coasts. Killybegs, on the north shore of the bay, is home to the country's largest trawlers, and seafood features on menus in the town.

The national standards — Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, colcannon and soda bread, which is predominantly an Ulster bread — belong as much to Donegal as anywhere. Pubs around the Diamond serve food by day, a tea room on Castle Street offers light meals, and the town also has a Bangladeshi restaurant and Chinese and Italian kitchens.

Quay Street leads down to the waterfront, where restaurants serve seafood and takeaways cater for families. Supermarkets, one on the Diamond itself and another south of the centre, supply self-caterers, and the craft village south of the town sells local work.