Museo "Chakana Kapak Ñan" Y Taller De Artesanía

11/10/2026

The scale and detail in this piece bring the narrative of these riders right to life. Standing next to the finished work really gives a sense of its presence!

11/10/2026

11/10/2026

In a field near Loughrea in County Galway stands a granite boulder carved with sweeping curves and spirals, made roughly two thousand years ago. It is the Turoe Stone, one of the finest examples of Iron Age Celtic art found anywhere in Ireland, and its decoration belongs to the style known as La Tene.

The stone is about a metre high and rounded at the top, and the pattern flows over its upper surface in a continuous design of trumpet shapes and curls. Nothing is known for certain about the people who carved it or why. Some scholars have thought it marked a sacred site or a boundary, and others that it stood at the heart of a ceremonial place.

It originally stood at the Rath of Feerwore, a nearby ringfort, and was moved to its present place beside Turoe House in the nineteenth century. A thing of such quiet beauty, carved so long ago, is a reminder of how sophisticated the Irish Celtic world was before writing was in common use.