Explore Midleton

The Midleton Distillery Experience occupies the Old Midleton Distillery in County Cork, a woollen mill of 1796 that became a barracks and, from 1825, a whiskey distillery. Production moved to a new distillery next door in 1975, and the old buildings opened to visitors in 1992. Tours show the iron water wheel of 1852 and the old stills and warehouses.

Fota House is a Regency mansion on Fota Island, near Cork, created in the 1820s by the architects Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison from a hunting lodge of the Smith-Barry family. Guided tours tell the story of the family and the people who worked for them, and the grounds hold an arboretum begun in the 1840s and Victorian working gardens.

St Colman's Cathedral is the Roman Catholic cathedral of the Diocese of Cloyne, set on a hillside above Cork Harbour in Cobh and dedicated to St Colmán of Cloyne. Building began in 1868 and, slowed by rising costs and changed plans, was completed in 1919. Its 91-metre steeple makes it the tallest church in Ireland. Daily Mass is held, and tours can be arranged.

Cobh Heritage Centre is a museum in part of the Victorian railway station on Deepwater Quay. Its exhibition, The Queenstown Story, covers the town's past as Queenstown: mass emigration from Ireland, convict ships to Australia, the sinking of the Lusitania and the Titanic, whose last port of call was Cobh in 1912. The centre also offers family history research.

Spike Island is a 42-hectare island in Cork Harbour, reached by ferry from Cobh. An early medieval monastery stood here; the island is now dominated by Fort Mitchel, an 18th-century bastion fort later used as a convict depot, a prison and an army post. Visitors explore the fort, its cell blocks, gun emplacements and more than a dozen exhibitions.