Even for a saint, Patrick seems to have been uncommonly busy founding churches, and if the legends are to be believed, poking his nose into other people’s business. So it’s nice to see that he has a peaceful resting place in the green and shady cemetery next to the cathedral at Downpatrick in County Down, Northern Ireland.

He lies deep beneath a slab of granite from the nearby Mourne Mountains, placed here around 1900 to protect the grave from overzealous pilgrims who were scooping up dirt to carry home. The area has been a pilgrims’ destination since Patrick died in 461. Their numbers peak, of course, on the March 17 anniversary of his death, when pilgrims lay daffodils on the old saint’s grave.

In modern times, Patrick has become closely associated with Irish nationalism, but he lived and spread the Christian faith in the North. Although it’s not March, I’m on a pilgrimage of my own to the grave at Downpatrick and to the town of Armagh, where my grandparents lived before emigrating to North America and where, legend has it, St. Patrick centered his Irish mission.

Following the Good Friday peace accord, I feel comfortable making my first visit to Northern Ireland. And since I’m here, I feel compelled to learn more about the saint whose name I bear.

In Gaelic, “Downpatrick” means “castle of Patrick,” so the town has laid claim to the saint, even though he founded his first church in a barn in Saul, two miles away. Born in Scotland or Wales, Patrick was captured and sold into slavery in Ireland as a boy. Although he escaped after six years, he later returned to Ireland as a missionary. Downpatrick is the largest town in the area where he first landed, and it’s a quick 22-mile drive southeast of Belfast.

The hilltop where the Down Cathedral sits has been a ritual site since Neolithic times and a Christian site since 432. The current cathedral was built in 1178 as a Benedictine monastery. A restoration in 1790 retained the Gothic arches of the nave, creating a narrow vault with ribs shaped like praying hands. The result is a paradox for those familiar with French cathedrals — a Gothic church of human scale. The medieval columns have an Irish charm unlike any others I’ve ever seen. Their capitals are carved with strikingly realistic vines, leaves, rabbits and other animals.

Myths about St. Patrick abound and even Joy Olive Wilkinson, the church’s secretary, admits that the tales are often livelier than the few surviving facts. “That thing about the snakes,” she says. “We’ve never had snakes in Ireland. In the story, the snakes stood for evil, but people took it literally.”

Apparently even some of the more widely accepted “facts” about St. Patrick are open to question. Wilkinson observes that “a lot of historians don’t think Patrick was ever in Armagh,” referring to my other destination, about 40 miles west of Downpatrick or an equal distance southwest of Belfast. Yet Armagh also stakes its claim to St. Patrick. Anglican and Catholic cathedrals, both named for the saint, face each other from opposing hills across the “Cathedral City.”

Wilkinson’s skepticism to the contrary, history leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and there’s no discounting the power of belief. When I visit Armagh, Peter McKittrick of the tourist office assures me that there is ample historic documentation that St. Patrick personally selected the church site now occupied by the Anglican cathedral.

Patrick might have been drawn to preach the gospel in Armagh because it was the power center of his day. Navan Fort, less than two miles outside Armagh’s present center, was the seat of the kings of Ulster. Extensive archaeological digs at the site have unearthed the stronghold of the ancient kings, and the interpretive center brings to life the story of this fabled kingdom sometimes compared to Troy and Camelot.

Only a low, grass-covered earthen ridge (where a Celtic temple lies buried) distinguishes the legendary Bronze Age center from the surrounding green pastures, but it is considered one of Northern Ireland’s most important ancient monuments.

Even from Navan Fort, the spires of Armagh’s cathedrals tower in the near distance — symbols of the Christianity that swept away the old Celtic order. Back in town, a display in the tourist office asserts that Patrick came to Armagh in 444 and built his first church a year later.

Legend has it that Patrick beseeched the local chieftain, Daire, for a church site and Daire gave him land at the bottom of a hill — not exactly what the missionary had in mind. When one of Daire’s horses grazed on the land, it died the next day. The enraged chieftain condemned Patrick, but was struck dead himself. Moved by the appeal of Daire’s wife, Patrick sprinkled holy water on the horse and the chieftain, who both revived. In return, Patrick was granted the land on the highest hilltop around.

In Irish legends, Patrick often seems more an irascible wizard than a pious saint, but reality seems to bear out some parts of the fanciful tale. Winding streets climb to the cathedral that crowns the ancient city center. A Christian church has stood here on this hill for more than 1500 years, having been destroyed and rebuilt 17 times.

In 447, Patrick decreed that the Armagh church would have pre-eminence over all churches in Ireland, and the town became the center of saints and scholars. By the seventh century, Armagh had become the religious capital of Ireland, overseeing the monasteries that would preserve Christian learning through Europe’s Dark Ages.

The current building is an 1834 restoration of a cathedral first built in 1268. Modest in its aspirations, the stone cathedral seems strong and solid more than soaring. Its Gothic stone arches are broad, and the resulting structure is tranquil in its simplicity. As I sit in one of the wooden pews absorbing the centuries of piety, I wonder if my grandparents or even my great-grandparents ever worshiped in this same spot.

When the venerable Anglican cathedral was being restored in the 1830s, the Roman Catholic archbishop took up residence in Armagh and the foundation stone of a second St. Patrick’s cathedral was laid on March 17, 1840. Work halted during the famine years and the French Gothic twin-spired facade was not completed until 1873, the year the church was consecrated.

It, too, sits on a hill, facing the Anglican church across the expanse of Armagh. Thanks to the Good Friday accord, the gulf between the hills doesn’t seem quite as wide as it once did. It takes me less than 10 minutes to walk through town, and I step inside to admire the mosaic tiles, stained glass and extensive marble inlays that make this Catholic St. Patrick’s far more ornate than the spare Anglican cathedral.

I have one final mission: to visit Armagh Ancestry to inquire about my family. The old days of genealogical research are gone, as all the dusty civil and church records — Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian — are being transferred to computer databases. With a copy of my grandmother’s birth certificate, listing her father, her mother and her mother’s maiden name, I have an unusual amount of information, says Deirdre Houlihan, who helps me fill out a form with the necessary information to begin a search through the appropriate databases.

“What’s your religion?” she asks.

“Episcopalian,” I reply. Houlihan is puzzled. “Anglican,” I correct myself.

She studies the birth certificate and looks up at me. “Dynes?” she says, reading my great-grandmother’s maiden name. “We’ll have to look at several databases.” It’s my turn to be confounded.

“Dynes,” she explains, “that’s a Catholic name.”

Travel writer Patricia Harris is based in Cambridge, Mass.

For More Information For information on Northern Ireland, contact the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, 551 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10176. Telephone: (212) 922-0101. Useful booklets from the Tourist Board include “Historic Monuments” and “Ancestral Heritage: Tracing Your Ulster Roots.” Web site: www.interknowledge.com/northern-ireland/.

The Downpatrick Tourist Information Centre is located at 74 Market St. Telephone: (011-44-1396) 612-233. The Armagh Tourist Information Centre is located on English Street in St. Patrick’s Trian. Telephone: (011-44-1861) 521-800.