The Carlow castle is in the centre of the town of Carlow, close to the river Barrow.
It was probably built in the 13th century by William Marshall, the successor to Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, to the throne of Lord of Leinster. Some decades later the castle was passed to Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, but it had several more owners in its history. One of them was a certain doctor Middleton, who decided to blow up a major part of the castle in 1814 to build a lunatic asylum.
Today only half of the donjon survives, the main section of the castle which contained the principal rooms of the castle, protected by two circular towers at the corners. The two towers have a diameter of about 8 metres and are 13 metres apart. The wall between them faces west-southwest. The towers are padlocked and only the pigeons dwell in them.
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