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Dublin: Full-Day Howth and Malahide Castle Tour
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Two places north of Dublin, and they couldn’t feel more different from each other. Malahide Castle carries eight centuries of history in its stone walls. Howth is a working fishing village on a headland with salt air and serious sea views. This five-hour tour puts them together in one day, and it works.
On the way out, you stop at Casino Marino for photos. It’s one of the finest Neoclassical buildings in Dublin, and most people drive straight past it without knowing it’s there. Worth knowing. At Malahide, a guided tour takes you inside a castle the Talbot family owned for 800 consecutive years. Eight hundred years of the same family accumulates stories, and the guides here know all of them, including the ghost stories.
From Malahide you head on to Howth, where you can walk the cliff path from the Summit down to the harbour. On a clear day the views stretch all the way across Dublin Bay to the Wicklow Mountains. Down at the harbour, the local seals are almost always around, waiting patiently for scraps from the fishing boats. They’ve been doing it long enough that they’ve stopped pretending to be subtle about it.
Howth village has several good fish and chip spots right on the harbour. If you’ve just come down off the cliff path, you’ll have earned it. The queue moves fast and the fish is landed locally, so this is about as fresh as it gets.
The cliff walk from Howth Summit offers a few different route options. The full loop runs about 9 kilometres, but you don’t have to do all of it. The path down from the Summit to the village is the most dramatic stretch and takes roughly 45 minutes at a comfortable pace.
Casino Marino gets its name from the Italian for “little house by the sea,” not from gambling. It was built in the 1760s for James Caulfeild, the first Earl of Charlemont, as a pleasure house overlooking Dublin Bay. The building looks deceptively small from the outside but has 16 rooms, 12 fireplaces, and clever architectural tricks throughout.
If you have time in Malahide after the castle, the village itself is worth a wander. There are some good cafes along the main street and a marina where you can watch boats come and go. It has a different pace from central Dublin.
On the DART back from Howth (if you stay independently after the tour), you’ll pass along the coast with sea views on one side and the Dublin mountains on the other. It’s one of the nicest commuter rail routes in the country, and at off-peak times you’ll almost certainly get a window seat.