Spanish Arch Galway
— — the stone the river walks past on its way to the sea.
Not only on a wall.
“The remains of a 1584 wall at the mouth of the River Corrib, where the river hands itself to Galway Bay. The arches once protected quays where Spanish ships unloaded wine and salt; that's where the name comes from. The Lisbon earthquake's tsunami took most of the structure in 1755, and what's left is the part Galway kept. On a clear afternoon people sit on the grass with chips, watching the swans, watching the Long Walk's painted houses across the water. The Atlantic is half a kilometre off and on a still day the sound of it carries across the grass.
Spanish Arch Galway, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Spanish Arch sits on the east bank of the River Corrib in Galway, on Ireland's west coast, where the river meets Galway Bay and the open Atlantic. The arches are the surviving remnant of a 1584 extension to the medieval Norman city wall, built by Mayor William Martin to protect the city's quays in the Fish Market area, now Spanish Parade. The Long Walk promenade runs from the arch toward the Claddagh district across the river. Galway is the seat of County Galway in the province of Connacht, and the arch sits a short walk from the Galway City Museum, which opened in its current building beside the arch in 2007.
The arch is a fragment of Galway's old defensive wall, completed in 1584 during Mayor William Martin's tenure and originally called Ceann an Bhalla, the head of the wall. Two openings remain: the Spanish Arch proper, and the smaller Caoċ Arch, the blind arch. Both were extensions of an older Norman wall the city had grown around. The name Spanish was attached later, after centuries of trade with Spain; Galway merchants imported wine, salt, and sherry through these quays, and the docks just outside the arch were where those ships tied up. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake sent a tsunami across the Bay of Biscay and into the western Irish coast; it took down most of the structure. What remains is what the water spared.
There is no fee, no ticket, no closing hour. The arch is part of the public street fabric of the city; people sit on the lawn behind it, eat fish and chips from McDonagh's a few minutes' walk away, watch the swans drift on the Corrib, and watch the painted row houses of the Long Walk across the water. On summer evenings the grass fills up and someone usually has a guitar. The Galway City Museum, opened in its current building beside the arch in 2007, holds exhibits on Galway's medieval and Spanish-trade history and is free to enter. The river current here is fast; the Atlantic is less than a kilometre away, and the wind comes off it cold even in July.