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Kilmainham Gaol - Dublin, Ireland

Built in 1796, on what was then the outskirts of the city, Kilmainham Gaol became one of the most important prisons in Dublin. It held both criminal and political prisoners. Kilmainham held hundreds of men and women in the days following the end of the 1916 Rising. Significantly, those prisoners who had been sentenced to death after the Rising were moved from Richmond Barracks and held in Kilmainham until they were executed or their sentences communted. 14 of the leaders of the Rising were executed in Kilmainham in May 1916.  Kilmainham was used constantly to house political prisoners during the War of Independence and the Civil War, and was eventually closed down in 1924. Restoration work on the Gaol began in 1960 and it opened to the public as a museum in 1966.