Thousands of tourists will be in Kilkenny over the next two weeks for what is likely to be the biggest celebration of the arts held in the city to date.
Once known as the Arts Week, the Kilkenny Arts Festival has extended its programme and broadened its appeal, with spectacular results.
The attendance figure of 20,000 in 1998 more than trebled last year, to 65,000, when a number of outdoor events were added to a programme which had previously concentrated on specialist events.
Artistic excellence continues to be at the festival's core, but its broader appeal is paying dividends, according to the festival manager, Ms Maureen Kennelly.
A survey taken in 1994 showed that 20 per cent of those attending the festival in that year were from outside Ireland; last year, that figure had risen to 33 per cent. The 1999 survey was carried out for Millennium Festivals Ltd by the tourism research centre at Dublin Institute of Technology.
Further evidence that the event is attracting large numbers of people to Kilkenny is provided by figures which show that 57 per cent of the 1994 audience was Kilkenny-based; that figure had fallen to 33 per cent last year.
Ms Kennelly said many tourists surveyed had come to Kilkenny especially for the festival, "so it's not a question of piggybacking on the fact that tourists are here at this time of the year anyway."
With two days to go before the festival opens, Ms Kennelly said excitement was mounting, with particular interest being shown in the premiere of Brendan Kennelly's play Judas, with Adrian Dunbar in the title role.
The play is produced by Theatre Unlimited, a Kilkenny group which is reuniting for its first new production since 1993.
The festival opens on Friday evening in an advance factory on the industrial estate at Loughboy, which will house exhibitions of work by the Scottish sculptor David Mach and the Mexican artist Francisco Toledo.
Mach's work, Here to Stay, is a series of classical columns constructed entirely from newspaper. Some 250,000 news papers have been used and arts students from around the country were completing the project yesterday.
As always, classical music, jazz and literature also form important elements of the festival programme, while outdoor events such as the carnival parade should again attract a mass audience.
The festival has a website at www.kilkennyarts.ie