Pól Ó Conghaile – I’m in the Shackleton Experience, a €7.5m reboot of a town hall museum in Co Kildare that several locals have told me is “massive” for the town.
The last time I visited, it wasn’t. It was fusty, a small museum in every sense – certainly nothing you’d detour for.
But today, I find light streaming through the ‘iceberg’, a new glass structure to the rear of the building. I listen to Ernest Shackleton’s crackling voice, scroll interactive screens, and sit into lifeboat seats for an immersive account of the survival tale following the loss of the Endurance in 1915. I browse diary entries, and peer at an actual biscuit from those iconic polar expeditions.
Financed by the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund and Kildare County Council, the Shackleton Experience sees Athy at “a pivotal point”, says general manager Aline FitzGerald.
She describes it as a 300-year-old building “reborn”, a unique drawcard that has welcomed visitors from some 20 countries since it opened last October. “It puts south Kildare on the map.”
The Athy attraction is the world’s only institution dedicated to Shackleton, who was born in nearby Kilkea. The hope now is that, similar to, say, the Balenciaga museum in Spain’s Basque Country, or the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, Co Derry, it can entice not just visitors with specialist interests, but unlock a wider, sleeping tourism potential.
For more, visit https://www.independent.ie/
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Credit to : Irish Independent