Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

Approach from the east and Slane's hill looks unassuming for somewhere with this much claimed for it - it's the spot where, in AD 433, St Patrick is said to have lit the first Paschal fire in Ireland, in deliberate defiance of the High King's ban on rival fires while the court at Tara held its own festival some ten kilometres away (the two hills, conveniently for the story, can see each other). Patrick supposedly impressed the king enough to be let carry on preaching, and put one of the king's own men, Erc, in charge here as bishop - Erc founded a monastery on the hill in the 6th century and is said to be buried in the graveyard under two gable-shaped stones known as the Bishop's Tomb. Standing between the ruins of the Franciscan College and St Patrick's Church, you're on ground that's seen most of it: a round tower here was burned by Vikings in 948, a motte and bailey went up in the 1170s (its builder, Richard Fleming, killed along with more than a hund...

  You come in through the site entrance into a graveyard that's still in active use - centuries-old cross-slabs standing shoulder to shoulder with modern headstones - and the first thing that stops you is Muiredach's Cross, reckoned by most to be the finest high cross in Ireland. Walk its east face and you're looking at Old Testament scenes (Adam and Eve, David and Goliath among them); round to the west face and it switches to the New Testament, the Crucifixion and a Last Judgement, the whole thing carved - so the theory goes - by the same mason responsible for the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnoise, with a pair of cats playing at the base of the shaft for good measure. It's named for Muiredach, an abbot who died in the early 920s (923 or 924, depending which source you trust), and a scaled reproduction of this exact cross stands in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Circle the South Church - its north side, then in through the door, then back out the west -...