Glencree German War Cemetery

A wrought-iron gate opens off a small roadside parking area with an explanatory plaque, and a path leads into a landscaped former quarry in the Glencree valley. The burial ground is laid out in a fan shape with eight curved paths, graves set in pairs under low granite name stones and symbolic stone crosses. At the heart of the site is a natural-stone memorial hall whose interior walls and ceiling carry mosaics by the Munich artist Fritz Berz. A natural-stone wall fronts the ground, a steep wall rises behind it, and a Celtic high cross stands above the site, visible from a distance and useful for spotting the turn.

This is the only memorial to German war dead in Ireland. It holds 134 burials, six from the First World War and 128 from the Second, brought here from more than 100 separate gravesites across 15 Irish counties. Most of the Second World War dead were Luftwaffe aircrew who came down over British waters and Kriegsmarine sailors whose bodies washed ashore on Irish coasts; 46 were civilian internees lost when the SS Arandora Star was sunk in July 1940. The average age of the identified dead was 25. A triangular stele carries a commemorative inscription in German, English and Irish. The quarry ground was made available by the Irish government free of charge and the cemetery dates from 1961, with a final reinterment in 1974 of Hermann Goertz, an Abwehr agent who operated in wartime Ireland.

The cemetery sits on the local road (L1011) roughly 0.6 km east of the R115, on your left if you are driving east, next to the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation with the river running alongside. It is a drive-up roadside stop with a small parking area, so no walking is needed to reach the gate. Coming over the Sally Gap on the R115 makes an easy pairing with the rest of the valley.

The appeal is quiet and reflective rather than scenic drama, and it is a short stop, not an attraction that fills a morning. Expect very few other visitors and almost no waiting. Since this is a memorial, stay on the paths, keep voices low, and leave crosses, stones and any tributes undisturbed. People are buried here, and the quiet is the point.