This paper takes its point of departure from the title of Ireland’s 2008 exhibition at the 11th Venice International Architecture Biennale. This exhibition, commissioned by Nathalie Weadick and Hugh Campbell, aimed to explore how ‘buildings interact with the “now”’, but also ‘how buildings engage on an intimate level with us as their users’. It examined ‘architecture as an intimate, conversational art form – one that enters into dialogue with history, politics, culture, and the individual on a deeper level’.[1] These are helpful starting points when thinking about the long-standing architectural presence of women religious across the Irish urban and rural landscape. Through an analysis of the buildings themselves and the archives generated around them, as well as a consideration of representation of the buildings across different art forms and media, this paper will trace some of these ‘intimate conversations’, and the different meanings of the buildings for their different occupants, users, and publics. It will also consider the shifting role of religious buildings through time, from the process of construction to contemporary changes including reuse, demolition, redevelopment, and renewal. Writing this paper has offered an opportunity to think about what these buildings do, rather than what they are or have been – how they have interacted with and changed the people, the spaces, and the environment within and around them.