Filming locations in County Meath

County Meath, the royal county just north of Dublin, hands set-jetters one of Ireland's most commanding monuments: Trim Castle, the largest Norman fortress in the land. In Braveheart it does double duty, its great keep dressed as both the medieval city of York and the streets of London, so a single Irish stronghold stands in for two English cities across Mel Gibson's 1995 epic.

The castle is an Office of Public Works site, with free access to the grounds and a small fee for the guided tour of the keep itself. Those keep tours are seasonal and led by a guide, so it is worth checking the times before you arrive, but even from the lawns the scale of the place, moat, curtain walls and soaring central tower, is striking.

Trim itself is the natural base, a small heritage town built around the castle and the river, about an hour from Dublin by road. That proximity makes it an easy day trip from the capital, though the town and the surrounding county, rich in further castles and far older tombs, reward a more leisurely stay.

Practically, this is one of the more relaxed set-jetting stops: drive out from Dublin, wander the free grounds at your own pace, and time your arrival to catch a keep tour if you want the full story of how the fortress became medieval England on screen. Sturdy shoes help on the uneven ground.

Beyond Braveheart, Meath is a county thick with history, from Norman keeps to the ancient passage tombs that predate the pyramids. But Trim Castle is the headline, a genuinely monumental fortress that wore the costume of two cities and still towers, unmistakably itself, over its quiet Irish town.