St Patrick’s Day Waterford 2020
As Ireland’s oldest city , Waterford City was the first city to declare St Patrick’s Day a national holiday. In 1903, Waterford Corporation declared that St Patrick’s Day should be a general holiday throughout the city and to entirely suspend business on the day. Before this St Patrick’s Day was not a national holiday in Ireland.
Although the feast of St Patrick has been celebrated since medieval times especially by the Franciscans, it was not until the mid seventeenth century that the 17th March became a holiday of obligation in the Catholic Church. When the Waterford born Franciscan Luke Wadding was appointed to the congregation of the Breviary in Rome he included St Patrick’s Day among the official saints days for the first time.
The St Patrick’s parade in Waterford starts at 1.00pm from the bus station comes down along the quays past the viewing stand on the mall and finishes on Parnell St.
There will be plenty of viewing space along the quays with a reserved viewing area available to people with disabilities outside City Hall on the Mall. Disabled parking is also available in Bolton Street across from the Mall.
Make a weekend of it in the very place that first declared St Patrick’s Day a general holiday in Ireland in 1903.
