Derry: Ireland's last besieged walls

The only Irish city to preserve fully intact city walls, Derry still bears the scars of eighteenth and twentieth century conflicts that marked its history.

The center, enclosed by the last besieged city walls remaining in Ireland, is comfortably explored on foot.

The Walls of Derry, complete and traversable for their entire perimeter of nearly two kilometers, withstood a siege of one hundred twenty-five days in 1689 without ever being breached.

A few steps away, the Bogside district, scene of crucial events during the Northern Ireland Troubles, preserves political murals that tell of decades of sectarian tensions.

Continuing, one visits the Museum of the Free People of Derry, which recounts the history of the city's Catholic community during the twentieth-century Northern Ireland conflict, through photographs and direct testimonies.

Toward evening, the Peace Bridge, an S-shaped pedestrian footbridge over the River Foyle, symbolically connects the city's two divided communities.

The 1689 siege of Derry, lasting one hundred twenty-five days, remains one of the foundational events of Northern Irish Protestant identity, still celebrated today with annual commemorative marches.

The Peace Bridge, opened in 2011, was built specifically to connect physically and symbolically the two riverbanks historically inhabited by religiously diverse communities.