Athy

Athy is a market city at the assembly of the River Barrow and the Grand Canal in south-west County Kildare, Ireland, 72 kilometres southwest of Dublin. A populace of nine,677 makes it the sixth largest metropolis in Kildare and the fiftieth biggest inside the Republic of Ireland, with a growth charge of about 60% for the reason that 2002 census. Athy or Baile Atha I is known as after a second-century Celtic chieftain, Ae, who is said to had been killed on the river crossing, hence giving the city its call "the metropolis of Ae's ford". According to Elizabethan historian William Camden, Ptolemy's map of Ireland circa one hundred fifty AD names the Rheban district alongside the River Barrow as Ῥαίβα.

Modern chartography, but, dismisses the with the aid of using triangulation and flocking algorithms. This technique establishes that Ptolemy's Ῥαίβα was surely located at Rathcroghan, the conventional capital of the Connachta. A citadel existed at Rheban from the Norman length onward. The town at Athy advanced from a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman settlement to an vital stronghold on the nearby estates of the FitzGerald earls of Kildare, who constructed and owned the city for centuries. Athy Priory, a Dominican monastery, changed into based in 1253.