Ladies View Killarney
Ladies View in the Killarney National Park is the most celebrated viewpoint in Kerry and one of the most famous scenic vistas in Ireland, a roadside stopping point on the main Killarney to Kenmare road from which the full extent of the Upper Lake, the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountains and the characteristic Killarney landscape of wooded lake shores, mountain backdrop and open water is revealed in a panorama of considerable power and beauty. The view takes its name from the Queen's Ladies-in-Waiting who stopped here during Queen Victoria's royal visit to Killarney in 1861 and expressed their admiration for the landscape.
The view encompasses the Upper Lake, Muckross Lake and part of Lough Leane spread across the floor of the valley below, the MacGillycuddy's Reeks with their dramatic profiles rising above the southern shore and the characteristic Killarney woodland of sessile oak, arbutus and yew covering the shores and islands of the lakes in the combination of water, mountain and woodland that has made Killarney one of the most celebrated landscapes in Ireland since the eighteenth century.
The Killarney National Park surrounding the view is one of the finest national parks in Ireland and contains the largest surviving area of native woodland in the country, the sessile oak and arbutus woodland covering the lake shores in a vegetation type that was once widespread across the moist Atlantic regions of Ireland and has been reduced to a few fragments of which the Killarney woods are the finest.