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The Irish Wake Museum has been selected as the only Irish finalist for the esteemed BGTW’s 2024 International Tourism Awards (ITAs).
The BGTW celebrates tourist sights and initiatives with its International Tourism Awards. It includes categories for projects in the UK and Ireland, Europe and worldwide and now this year’s finalists have been announced.
The Irish Wake Museum has been shortlisted under the category ‘Best UK and Ireland Tourism Project’ and sits alongside just two other finalists, the Aerial Red Squirrel Trail at Landmark Forest Adventure Park in Scotland and London’s historic National Portrait Gallery, which has just reopened following a £41 million glow-up.
The Irish Wake Museum in Waterford, Ireland is described by the guild of travel writers as ‘a rare opportunity to uncover an iconic part of Irish culture’.
Only Guild members can nominate tourism attractions and destinations for the annual awards and the award-winning global travel writer and guild member Isabel Conway nominated the museum during the summer of 2024.
Since that initial nomination, the Museum has undergone a rigorous judging process by the British Guild of Travel Writers and it has now made it to the finalist selection as just one of 3 attractions/projects in the running for the best tourism project in the UK and Ireland. The Tourism Awards are for those in the travel trade and are judged entirely by the Guild.
The next stage of the awards process is a private Guild member voting opportunity to choose each winner in the three categories -UK and Ireland; Europe and Wider World.
The winners will be announced at the very high-profile awards ceremony, which is always held on the eve of the annual tourism event in London ‘World Travel Market’ on November 4th.
In her nomination, Travel Writer journalist Isabel Conway says, “The Irish Wake is immortalised by writers, poets, folklorists and movie makers and now there’s a museum devoted to one of Ireland’s most iconic cultural traditions.
The country’s oldest urban domestic dwelling, a 15th-century almshouse, whose residents earned their keep praying for the souls of patrons, houses the Irish Wake Museum, part of the Viking Triangle project to breathe new life into disused buildings in Waterford city centre.
Spread over six rooms, different themes associated with death over the centuries are explored through story-telling, sensory elements including, incense, sounds of traditional Irish keening (a centuries-old mourning dirge) LED and natural light illuminating fascinating exhibits, which includes a Bronze Age funerary urn and one of Ireland’s oldest death masks.
Visitors are urged to ‘Memento Mori’ – remember death –whilst rejoicing in life as no brief candle but a splendid torch held for a moment before handing it on to future generations.
In keeping with the spirit of the founders of the almshouse, €1 from each admission ticket goes to the Waterford Hospice movement.”
Visitors to the museum have left spellbound over the last year, and we take into account and judge the success of the museum on guest feedback and reviews – and reviews of the museum are hugely positive – but the reviews from some of the world’s most experienced travel writers is another level.
CEO of Waterford Treasures Collection of Museums, Sara Dolan
Samhain is one of the most popular times of the year at The Irish Wake Museum and this year it is set to host a series of events for little ones and for adults only.
Children can enjoy ‘fiddle face mask making’ workshops and there are extra spooky tours at the Irish Wake Museum, definitely not for kids, this Halloween.
Brave over 16s are invited to discover the reality of life in the historic city centre at the Irish Wake Museum during an extra spooky tour.
Learn about the horrors the city held from plague victims to body-snatchers in this fifteenth-century almshouse – a building which has seen six centuries of deaths within its walls. More information here.