BEYOND THE FAMOUS FORT
Beyond Dún Aonghasa: Aran's Other Ancient Sites
The Seven Churches ruins, the rectangular Worm Hole, and Inis Meáin's Dún Chonchúir fort — three Aran sites drawing far fewer crowds than Dún Aonghasa.
See Aran Islands trips on GetYourGuide ↗A trio of Aran sites often skipped
Dún Aonghasa draws most of the attention on a first visit, and understandably so given its scale and setting, but each of the three islands holds at least one other site well worth the extra detour if your day allows it. Inis Mór alone has the Seven Churches monastic ruins and the strange rectangular sea pool known as the Worm Hole, both reachable by bike from the main harbour without too much extra effort, while Inis Meáin's Dún Chonchúir is arguably as visually impressive as Dún Aonghasa itself, just seen by a fraction of the visitors.
The Seven Churches — more names than churches
Na Seacht dTeampaill, or the Seven Churches, on Inis Mór grew into one of the largest monastic foundations in western Ireland after being founded in the wake of Saint Brecan, a missionary traditionally associated with the fifth century, though the earliest surviving buildings are later. Despite the name, only two churches — Teampall Bhreacáin and Teampall an Phoill — still stand today, alongside a beehive-shaped stone hut, a holy well, a cemetery and several carved crosses scattered across the enclosure. Exactly why it's called "seven" is genuinely debated among historians, with theories ranging from a lost pilgrimage-route count to the seven saints said to be buried on the site.
Teampall Bhreacáin's slow-built nave
The largest structure at the Seven Churches, Teampall Bhreacáin, wasn't raised in a single building campaign — construction stretched across several distinct phases from around the eighth century through to the thirteenth. Its oldest surviving corner shows tenth-century stonework featuring a distinctive projecting corner feature called an anta, a detail archaeologists rely on to help date early Irish church buildings where written records are scarce or missing entirely. Walking the site today, even briefly, means reading several centuries of construction layered visibly into one relatively small footprint of ruined stonework.
Poll na bPéist — the Worm Hole
On Inis Mór's west coast, not far from Dún Aonghasa, a startlingly rectangular pool called Poll na bPéist sits cut cleanly into the flat limestone shelf, filled by the sea through hidden channels running beneath the surrounding rock. It looks engineered at first glance, but it's entirely natural, shaped over a very long timescale by erosion following the rock's existing joint lines rather than by any human hand. Its unusual geometry made it striking enough to host stages of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, with competitors jumping from a platform roughly 28 metres above the water into the narrow, dark pool below.
Dún Chonchúir — Inis Meáin's giant oval fort
Inis Meáin's Dún Chonchúir is a dry-stone fort on a scale that genuinely rivals Dún Aonghasa: an oval enclosure roughly 70 metres long by 35 metres wide, with walls reaching up to seven metres high in places and built from tightly fitted limestone blocks. Its precise age is uncertain — estimates place its main construction anywhere from the Iron Age through to the early medieval period, and like Dún Aonghasa it may well have been rebuilt or remodelled more than once over that span. Because Inis Meáin sees far fewer day-trippers than its larger neighbour, Dún Chonchúir is often visited in near total silence.
Synge's Chair nearby
The playwright J. M. Synge lived on Inis Meáin between 1898 and 1902 while researching what became his book The Aran Islands, spending long stretches observing island life at close quarters. A windswept clifftop spot near Dún Chonchúir is still known locally as Synge's Chair, and tradition holds it as a place where he liked to sit, look out toward Inis Mór across the bay, and write. His time on the islands fed directly into his later, far more famous play The Playboy of the Western World, which drew heavily on stories and speech patterns he heard there.
More things to do nearby
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