The story of St Patrick's Cathedral
St Patrick chose this hilltop, Ard Mhacha or the Height of Macha, for his principal church in 445 AD, after first building elsewhere in the area. He dug a ditch around the new church to mark it as a place of sanctuary, and the site became the spiritual centre of Christianity in Ireland. The city of Armagh takes its name from the hill.
Its importance made it a target. Between 831 and 1013 the Vikings raided Armagh ten times. In 1004 the High King Brian Boru came to the church to lay gold on its altar in recognition of its standing. Ten years later, after his forces broke the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, Brian Boru was killed, and his body was carried in procession to be buried here. A plaque and a 2015 statue by Rory Breslin mark the grave today.
The cathedral you see was redesigned by Archbishop Mael-Padriagh Ua Scannail in 1268, who created the large crypt that survives barely changed beneath the building. Archbishop Richard Robinson arrived in 1765 and is remembered as the second founder of Armagh, driving the city's Georgian rebuilding. A major restoration of the cathedral followed in the 1830s.
What survives inside ties the whole story together: five Celtic stone sculptures in pink sandstone, possibly from the ancient Ulaid people, an 11th-century Celtic cross, and monuments from many centuries, all above a crypt more than 750 years old.