main trading town for the midlands of Ireland, and the most popular route for crossing the Shannon, as well as the best-defended settlement in the region. People migrated north from Clonmacnoise to Athlone, and along with the population decrease went much of the support that the site needed to survive, and former allies began to recognise the decline in the site's influence. The influx of continental religious orders such as the Cistercians, Franciscans, Augustinians, Benedictines, Cluniacs, etc. around the same time fed into this decline as numerous competing sites began to crop up. Ireland's move from a monastic framework to a diocesan one in the twelfth century similarly diminished the site's religious standing, as it was designated the seat of a small and impoverished diocese. In 1552 the English garrison at Athlone destroyed and looted Clonmacnoise for the final time, leaving it in ruins. The monastery ruins were one of the stops on the itinerary of Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ireland in 1979. Buildings and High Crosses The site includes the ruins of a cathedral, seven churches, two round towers, three high crosses and a large collection of Early Christian grave slabs. Most of the churches have recently undergone comprehensive conservation works, mostly re-pointing, with the Nun's Church (about 1 km off site), currently under wraps while it too undergoes the same process. O'Rourke's Tower: Though named O'Rourkes' Tower, after 10th-century Connacht king Fergal O'Rourke, the Chronicum Scotorum records that it was finished in 1124 by Turlough O'Connor, king of Connacht, and Gilla Christ Ua Maoileoin, abbot of Clonmacnoise. Eleven years later it was struck by lightning which knocked off the head of the tower. The upper part of the tower is later work, so there is some speculation that the masonry thus toppled in the storm of 1135 may have been reused in the building of McCarthy's Tower. Temple Finghín & McCarthy's Tower: Romanesque church and round tower – 12th century. An unusual occurrence was the vandalism of this church in 1864 by a person from Birr on a 'pleasure party' to the Seven Churches, as Clonmacnoise was often termed. This led to a landmark case when a prosecution was brought against the vandal by the Crown, due to the efforts of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Some of the funds which had been raised for the prosecution were later used by the