The lake itself is no mere backdrop; it sits at the centre of a landscape that has drawn human settlement since prehistory, and the town that grew along its shore carries layers of that occupation in its streets, its buildings, and its margins.

The settlement's medieval character is perhaps its most legible historical feature. The de Burgh family, the powerful Norman dynasty that dominated much of Connacht from the thirteenth century, established a fortified presence here, and the remains of their Carmelite priory, founded around 1300, still stand in the town. The circuit of the old town walls, though fragmentary, traces a boundary that once defined the limits of a planned medieval borough. Loughrea also became a diocesan centre, and St Brendan's Cathedral, built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is widely regarded as one of the most significant collections of Irish arts and crafts work in the country, housing stained glass by artists of the Irish Revival including work produced by the An Túr Gloine cooperative.

The lake shore and its immediate environs reward careful attention. The water's edge has yielded evidence of earlier occupation, and the wider parish sits within a part of south Galway where ringforts and other earthwork monuments are relatively dense in the surrounding farmland. The town is accessible from the M6 motorway and sits roughly halfway between Galway city and Ballinasloe, making it a practicable stop rather than a destination requiring particular effort to reach.