City Information

Dubliners are fiercely proud of their city, and while DUBLIN is the Republic of Ireland's capital it is quite apart from, and can be dismissive of, the rest of the country - one Dublin wag once remarked with characteristic caustic humour that "the only culture outside Dublin is agriculture." Over the past decade, as young people from rural Ireland and all over Europe, gravitate toward the city to share in the wealth, not experienced since Dublin's much celebrated Georgian heyday, this urban/rural divide has started to wane. As a result Dublin exudes the style and confidence of any cosmopolitan European capital - most apparent at night when Dubliners party with a panache verging on the reckless. Dublin's economic upturn is impacting on the city's rapidly changing urban landscape too, with restaurants, cafés, bars and clubs opening in abundance, and Dublin's famous pub scene is now matched by an equally celebrated club scene. On the downside, however, its reputation as one of the party capitals of Europe has attracted droves of "alco-tourists" who arrive in the city for booze-fuelled weekends; they have become such a problem that some areas of the city, such as Temple Bar, have actually banned stag and hen parties.

The spirit of Dublin is undergoing massive upheavals too, with youthful enterprise set against a leaden traditionalism that harks back nostalgically, as in the words of one popular folk song, to "Dublin city in the rare old times". However, the collision of the old order and the forward-looking younger generations is an essential part of the appeal of this extrovert and dynamic city.

If you approach Dublin by sea, you'll have an opportunity to appreciate its magnificent physical setting, with the fine sweep of Dublin Bay and the weird, conical silhouettes of the Wicklow Mountains to the south providing an exhilarating backdrop. Central Dublin is not big, and it's easy to find your way around. One obvious axis is formed by the river, the Liffey, which runs from west to east and acts not only as a physical, but also a social and, at times, psychological dividing line.

The transformation to top of Europe's economic class has cast the city economically and culturally into the heart of the continent. This new-found cosmopolitan chic has its home in the vibrant Temple Bar area, "Dublin's Left Bank," with its numerous pubs, clubs, galleries and restaurants. However, for many visitors, the city's heart lies around the best of what is left of Georgian Dublin - the grand set pieces of Fitzwilliam and Merrion squares, and their graceful red-brick houses with ornate, fan-lighted doors and immaculately kept central gardens, and the wide but strangely decorous open space of St Stephen's Green. The elegant southside is also the setting for Dublin's august seat of learning, Trinity College and its famous library where you can see the exquisitely ornate Book of Kells; Grafto Street , the city's upmarket shopping area; and most of the city's museums and art galleries.

North of the Liffey, the main thoroughfare is O'Connell Street, on which stands the General Post Office, the scene of violent fighting in the Easter Rising of 1916. Further north, among Georgian squares older and seedier than the ones you'll see on the southside, are the Dublin Writers' Museum and the Hugh Lane Gallery. West again, and you come to Dublin's biggest open space - indeed, one of the world's largest city parks - Phoenix Park, home of both the President's Residence and the zoo.

The urban sprawl quickly gives way to the genteel villages which punctuate the curve of Dublin Bay, from the fishing port of Howth in the north, to the southern suburbs of Sandycove with its James Joyce connections, Dalkey, made famous by the comic writer Flann O'Brien, and salubrious Killiney, now colonized by the rich and famous. Added to this is the fact that Dublin must be one of the easiest capitals to escape from, making it a good base for exploring the hills and coastline of Wicklow to the south and the gentler scenery to the north that leads up to the megalithic monuments of the verdant Boyne Valley.

Dublin is divided into north and south with the river Liffey acting as a physical, social and at times psychological dividing line. Traditionally the southside has been regarded as the wealthier end of town, and certainly from a visitor's perspective it does possess the majority of the city's historic sites as well as being the home of the newer, more upmarket centres for shopping and socializing. The busy traffic intersection, College Green , which is framed by the elegant exteriors of Dublin's premier university Trinity College and the old eighteenth-century parliament building, now housing the Bank of Ireland, was once the central point of the old Viking city. Stretching south of here is the pedestrianized Grafton Street, the city's commercial and social hub, leading to the stylish Georgian streets that surround St. Stephen's Green. Heading directly west of Trinity College, however, will bring you to the narrow, cobbled lanes of the Temple Bar area, the centre for the city's nightlife, overlooked by the imposing facade of Dublin Castle , the seat of British rule until 1921. Further west still are Dublin's most important cathedrals, Christchurch and St Patrick's, it's near here that the rich smell of malting grain from the nearby Guinness brewery begins to fill the air.

On the northside of the river from the brewery is the historic Smithfield area, scene of the famous horse sales and home to the Jameson Whiskey distillery, east of which is the city's main thoroughfare, O'Connell Street from which the rebellion was launched that resulted in Irish independence.

Although the earliest evidence of a settlement beside the Liffey is on Ptolemy's celebrated map of 140 AD, which shows a place called Eblana on the site of modern Dublin, it is as a Viking settlement that Dublin's history really begins. The Norse raiders sailed up the Liffey and, destroying a small Celtic township, set up a trading post on the south bank of the river at the ford where the royal road from the Hill of Tara in the north crossed the Liffey on its way to Wicklow. The Vikings adopted the Irish name, Dubh Linn ("Dark Pool"), for their settlement, which soon amalgamated with another Celtic settlement, Baile Átha Cliath ("town of the hurdles," pronounced Ballya-aw-kleea, and still the Irish name for Dublin), on the north bank.

The next wave of invaders were the Anglo-Normans. In the twelfth century, the opportunistic Strongbow and a band of Welsh knights were sent over by Henry II in response to the beleaguered King of Leinster, Dermot McMurrough's request for help to regain his throne from the High King Rory O'Connor; in return he gave an oath of fealty. The invasion was successful, and the English king, concerned that Strongbow and his Welsh adventurers were becoming too powerful, fixed a court at Dublin. The city was thereby established as the centre of British influence in Ireland and set the precedent for the annual social and political gathering, known as the Seasons, which were to shape Dublin's role and character for the next seven centuries.

Because most of the early city was built of wood, only the two cathedrals, part of the Castle, and one or two churches have survived from before the seventeenth century. What you see today, in both plan and buildings, dates essentially from the Georgian period. By this time, soldiers in the service of the English monarchs, who had been rewarded with confiscated land, had begun to derive income from their new estates. As they began to replace their original fortified houses with something more fashionable, they wished also to participate in the country's burgeoning economic and political life, which was centred on Dublin. Their town houses (along with those of the growing business and professional classes), and the grandeur of the public buildings erected during this period, embodied the new confidence of the British ruling class . However, this was a group that was starting to regard itself not as British, but as Irish.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the wealth of this Anglo-Irish class was reflected in a rich cultural life; Handel's Messiah, for instance, was first performed in Ireland, while much of the architecture, furniture and silverware associated with the city dates from this period. Growing political freedom was to culminate in the parliament of 1782 in which Henry Grattan made a famous Declaration of Rights, modelled on the recent American example, which came very close to declaring Irish (by which he meant Protestant Anglo-Irish) independence. A severely limited and precarious enterprise, the Irish bid for self-government was soon to collapse, with the abortive 1798 Rebellion and the Act of Union which followed in 1801.

The Act of Union may have shorn Dublin of its independent political power, but the city remained the centre of British administration, in the shape of the Vice Regent, and the Seasons continued to revolve around the Viceroy's Lodge (now the President's Residence) in Phoenix Park. Along with the rest of Ireland, Dublin entered a long economic decline and became the stage for much of the agitation that eventually led to Independence. The first step towards self-government came in 1829, when the Catholic lawyer (and Kerryman) Daniel O'Connell achieved limited Catholic emancipation, allowing Catholics to play some part in the administration and politics of their capital city and, in a signal victory, was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin. The city was also the centre of the Gaelic League, which, founded by Douglas Hyde in 1893, encouraged the formation of an Irish national consciousness through efforts to restore the native language and culture. This paved the way for the Celtic literary revival under W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory and the establishment, in 1904, of the Abbey Theatre.

While political violence in nineteenth-century Dublin revolved around the independence issue, it was social politics, most especially the fight for the establishment of trade unionism, that resulted, at the turn of the century, in Dubliners taking to the streets in protest. In 1913, this came to a head in the Great Lock-Out, when forcibly unemployed workers and their families died of hunger and cold. Open violence hit the streets during Easter Week of 1916 in the uprising that was the main event in the long struggle for Irish independence. The prominent battles were fought in and around the centre of Dublin, and the insurgents made the General Post Office their headquarters. The city's streets were once again the scene of violence during the brief Civil War that broke out after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921, when supporters and opponents of the partition of Ireland fought it out across the Liffey, and the Four Courts, one of Dublin's great Georgian buildings, went up in flames after being seized by opponents of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The history of Dublin since Independence has been that of the capital of an old country yet a young nation endeavouring to leave behind its colonial past. It's to this, as well as the appalling condition of many of the old tenements, that the destruction of much of the Georgian city can be attributed. A corollary of the demolition of the city's Georgian buildings in the 1960s was the decanting of Dubliners to inadequately planned suburban estates, which today are blighted by some of the worst social conditions in Europe. Since the mid 1980s city planners have been aimed to reverse this trend of inner-city depopulation, with new apartment blocks being built in previously run-down areas to cater for the city's burgeoning and increasingly affluent middle classes.

One of the outstanding architectural successes of recent years has been the new development at Temple Bar, which has done much to enhance the image and atmosphere of the city. Indeed, Dublin now has a new feel to it, a sense that the legacy of its colonial relationship with Britain has finally been put to one side, as the capital, along with the rest of the Republic, looks increasingly to Europe and America, rather than across the Irish Sea.

The Easter Rising of 1916, which resulted in pitched battles in the streets of Dublin, is remembered as one of the key events leading to Irish self-government. In fact, at the time, it seemed to most Nationalists a botched and inconclusive event. Leaders of the Irish Volunteers , a Nationalist group that had been founded in 1913, secretly planned a nationwide uprising for Easter Sunday 1916. The insurrection was to be staged with the help of a shipment of arms from Germany which were to be picked up by Sir Roger Casement. Things began to go wrong almost immediately: the arms arrived a day too early, and the British apprehended Casement and hanged him.

So secret had the preparations for the uprising been that the Irish Volunteers' leader, Eoin MacNeill, knew nothing of them. A week before Easter, the extremist plotters, led by Pádraig Pearse, showed MacNeill a forged order, purporting to come from the British authorities at Dublin Castle, for the suppression of the Irish Volunteers. MacNeill consented to give the order for the uprising. Then, the day before it was due to happen, he learned that the document was a forgery, and placed advertisements in the Sunday papers cancelling the insurrection. Pearse and his allies, however, pressed ahead in Dublin only the next day: Easter Monday. They took, among other public buildings, the General Post Office (GPO) in O'Connell Street, and Pearse walked out onto the steps of the GPO to read the historic Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Fighting continued for five days before being suppressed by the British authorities.

It was not the rising itself, but the British reaction to it, that was significant for the Republicans. The authorities executed a total of fifteen leaders of the rebellion, including Pearse and another patriot, James Connolly, at Kilmainham Gaol. The result in the eyes of the public, however, was to turn these men into martyrs to the Nationalist cause.

When, a year later, the British attempted to introduce conscription to the trenches of World War I, the public mood turned sharply away from any form of compromise with British rule and towards demands for full independence, which was finally achieved in 1921.