Sean’s Bar In Athlone, Ireland Is The Oldest Pub In The World

In America, the question of whether a certain establishment is the oldest of its kind is fairly straightforward. Relative to the rest of the world, we’re quite a young country, and written records, while imperfect, can usually date the opening of a business to a given year. We know, for instance, that Fraunces Tavern is the oldest restaurant in New York — records exist of its opening in 1762, and there are no currently operating restaurants in the state that date back further than that. But in Europe, it’s more complicated. Take the question of the oldest pub in the world, which is Sean’s Bar in Athlone, Ireland.

Not only are written records harder to come by the further back in time we go, but we eventually run into the Ship of Theseus problem. How much of an old building must survive in order for it to count as the same building? On top of that, plenty of pubs, including one that alleges to be the U.K.’s oldest, have cooked up backstories and histories to rake in cash from tourists who want to see a little piece of history. But Sean’s Bar is the one with the most straightforward claim to the title.

Located a few miles south-southeast of Ireland’s geographic center, the town of Athlone’s Gaelic name translates to “the town of Luan’s ford,” referring to its former status as a strategically important place to cross the River Shannon. Near that crossing — “the Great Ford” — a man by the name of Luain Mac Luighdeach, or Luain son of Lewy, established a pub in the year 900 A.D. It exists to this day as Sean’s Bar.

That would date the pub back to the Viking era, when Norse invaders beleaguered the Emerald Isle. It would also make Sean’s Bar older than whiskey. There are many fine Irish whiskies today, but the earliest mention of the spirit came in the Annals of Clonmacnoise in 1405, some 500 years after the pub’s founding. In the days following, patrons would have drunk something like mead, an earlier form of alcohol made from fermented honey instead of whiskey or beer. Guinness may be an Irish classic today, but its brewery wasn’t founded until several centuries later.

As cool as this all sounds, a degree of skepticism is understandable. After all, there’s a lot of money to be made in claiming oneself as the oldest pub in a given country, let alone the world, and there are plenty of establishments in both Ireland and the U.K. that have professed their ancient status without much evidence. However, Sean’s Bar has been thoroughly investigated by the National Museum of Ireland, and its claim is widely seen as credible.

Although most of the building that now makes up Sean’s Bar was constructed around the early 18th century, a section of the back wall was found to be made in part with wattle and wicker, an ancient building material that was certainly no longer favored in the 1700s. Also found on the grounds of the pub were a variety of old coins, which were minted by the building’s landlords for use at the establishment. While the coins and most of the wall were taken by the National Museum of Ireland, a section of the original barrier remains on display in the bar itself.