Liss Ard


Useful Information

Location: Near Skibbereen, West Cork.
Open: All year daily. [2007]
Fee: Liss Ard House: Weekly EUR 5,080.
Lake Lodge: Weekly EUR 7,620.
Classification: Artwork
Light: n/a
Dimension:
Guided tours:
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address: Liss Ard, Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland, Tel: +353-28-40000, Fax: +353-28-40001. E-mail: contact
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.
Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1924 garden founded.
1992 Irish Sky Garden created.

Description

Liss Ard Gardens is sort of modern garden, an experiment in the country of traditional garden architecture. A garden created by modern artists, financed by its guest houses and regular music events. The 200-acre estate has two hotels, the Georgian Liss Ard House and the Victorian Liss Ard Lake Lodge. Once a full-service hotel and extensively covered in magazines, it was a retreat for numerous celebrities, including Oasis, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, Patti Smith and Nick Cave. It was also a location for photo shootings.

The garden is segmented into four elements: stone, wood, sky, and water. One of them, sky, was designed by the American artist James Turrell. He is famous for the Roden Crater in Arizona.

Irish Sky Garden is a hill with a doorway, at least it seems so. The visitor walks underground through the rim of an artificial crater and reaches a stair. Up the stairs and through the sky portal one stands in the center of a steep grassy crater. This is a modern version of the old celtic stone fort, an inverted tumulus, a sky observatory, and an artwork. A great place for meditation.

This is not the kind of thing we normally list on showcaves.com. But the subterranean part of the artword is such a vital and substancial part of the structure that we had to list it.