Once the home of landed gentry, the Park Hotel Kenmare is now one of Ireland’s foremost privately owned luxury hotels. As the name implies, it stands in a park, with magnificent views. It stands high on a hillside with an impressive entrance that is reached by a flight of steps beneath an awning. Added to beautiful terraced gardens and walkways leading down to fields, woods and the estuary of the Kenmare River, the Park Hotel is the ideal venue to forget the pressures of modern living. Set in a heavenly location overlooking Kenmare Bay the hotel is in the heart of Ireland’s most scenic countryside. The original imposing limestone building was constructed by the Great Southern & Western Railway Company in 1897. In those days, the train would stop at Kenmare and the gentry would stay here before travelling onwards. It was totally restored and refurbished about 20 years ago maintaining the grandness of the past.
The interior is rich in high-ceilinged sitting rooms and lounges, crackling open fireplaces, original oil paintings, tapestries, plush furnishings, and museum-worthy antiques, including an eye-catching cistern decorated with mythological figures and supported by gilded sea horses and dolphins. Its rooms are individually decorated in a mix of Georgian and Victorian furnishings and rich upholsteries to reflect the age and style of the hotel and yet offer every modern facility. The elegant dining room, with romantic views of the water, gardens, and the ever changing mountains across the bay is one of the most acclaimed hotel restaurants in Ireland, known to use local ingredients in a mélange of Asian and Continental styles. All of the above mentioned, plus the service provided by the professional yet discreet and friendly staff, exudes an intrinsically welcoming atmosphere.