1850s – Royal Victoria Hotel, Killarney, Co. Kerry

The Royal Victoria Hotel, one of Ireland’s first “grand” hotels occupied this location during the 19th and early 20th century and played host to Princes, Dukes and Earls and, according to popular legend, enjoyed a brief visit by Queen Victoria on her visit to Killarney in 1861. In the early 1940s the Irish Tourist Association Survey noted that the Victoria Hotel “once the finest hotel in the district” had been converted from a farmhouse “about 130 years”. The site is now occupied by the Castlerosse Hotel, opened in 1960.