YOU COULD SPEND DAYS AT POWERSCOURT SAVORING THE IRISH GENIUS FOR LANDSCAPE GARDENING OR WANDERING LIKE MYTHIC KING FERGUS IN THE GENTLE WILDS OF THE WOODLANDS AND MEADOWS OF THE 1,000 ACRE ESTATE.
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Jack Yeats. The gallery backs onto Merrion Square, one of Dublin’s finest Georgian squares, where rows of elegant townhouses are distinguished by differently colored doors and hand-burnished
brass fixtures. Oscar Wilde lived at 1 Merrion Square from 1855 to 1876, and should you wonder where he wet his whistle, a good bet might be O’Donoghue’s, a pub established in 1792 only a block away. The barkeeps still pull a fine pint of Guinness, and the room is famous for its nightly live music. The Ritz-Carlton has its own pub, McGills, where the Albaquirky Turkeys play a driving version of traditional Irish music. The resort’s gastronomic jewel, though, is its casual fine-dining restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Powerscourt, the London-based chef’s first Irish venture. Conceived as a farm-tofork venue relying intensely on Irish products, the restaurant provides a literal taste of the countryside in a country about the size of West Virginia. The lamb is raised less than 20 minutes away, the vegetables come from an organic farm a mile down the road. As for the mushrooms, the kitchen staff forages them in the woods and meadows of Powerscourt.
IMAGES BY DAVID LYON; SUITE IMAGE BY VISION PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF RITZ-CARLTON POWERSCOURT
Previous page: The 19th-century Pepperpot Tower was modeled on a peppermill belonging to the seventh Viscount Powerscourt, Mervyn Wingfield. This page, top: A fountain in Walled Garden at Powerscourt Gardens. Center: Gordon Ramsay’s County Wicklow lamb with potato galette. Bottom: The Mountain View Suite at RitzCarlton Powerscourt.
For full immersion in the lifestyle of latter-day Irish gentry, retire to the Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt, where you can nurse a tumbler of Tyrconnell single-malt Irish whiskey on the terrace. The 200room resort opened in 2007 and is just a five-minute saunter from the Powerscourt manor. Its stately Palladian architecture and Georgian-inspired décor are complemented by the sybaritic ESPA spa and invisible (but indispensable) contemporary technology. Concierges can advise guests on the best woodland hikes and runs and provide maps and electronic keys to the hidden, gated parts of the estate. They can also arrange horseback riding through the countryside, golf on either of Powerscourt’s two 18-hole courses, or fly fishing for sea-run trout on the River Dargle. Dublin is only a half hour away, making it possible to combine the rustic pleasures of the Irish countryside with the urban rush of the Irish capital. It’s worth making a pilgrimage to the august neoGothic grounds of Trinity College to see the Book of Kells displayed in the library. Created in the 9th century, this stunning volume of the Gospels is one of the earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts and an Irish national treasure. The Irish also treasure the outsized personalities of their artists. At the National Gallery of Ireland, one section is dedicated to the Yeats clan: portraitist John Butler Yeats and his sons, poet and sometimes painter William Butler Yeats and modern Expressionist master