Sights Overview

The River Liffey divides Dublin into the Northside and the Southside, the two principal center-city areas, and almost all the major sights in either area are within an hour's walk from one another.

Most areas of interest to the visitor can be found in the center of the Southside. Christ Church Cathedral sits atop the hill where Dublin is said to have been founded over a thousand years ago. It looks down with solemn authority on the river as it meanders up toward the merely 400-year-old splendor of Trinity College -- whose Old Library is home to the Book of Kells -- and its enclosed, cobblestoned campus. The historic patina of Dublin is buffed to its highest gloss around Merrion Square, the heart of the city's fabled Georgian district. This tranquil square is one of the few places in Southside Dublin where you can feel what the city must have been like 150 years ago. It has a pristine public garden buffered by a lovely green. Towering over the square on all four sides are some of Dublin's best-preserved Georgian town houses: brick facades overrun with ivy, sporting sooty clay chimneys and black iron gates, punctuated every few steps by the quintessential Georgian icon, the rounded doorway painted thick green, red, or yellow. Here, No. 29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street can introduce you to the elegant period interiors of the 18th century.

Just to the west is "Museum Central" -- a bevy of blocks home to the city's most august institutions, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Archaeology and History, Leinster House, the National Library, and the National Museum of Natural History. Continuing west, follow the throngs of upscale shoppers to Grafton Street, Dublin's most famous pedestrian street, running south to famed St. Stephen's Green and its gloriously Georgian Newman House. Head north instead and you'll hit Temple Bar, the area of cobblestone streets and small lanes bounded by Wellington Quay and Dame Street that has been transformed into Dublin's hottest scene-arena. Its nightlife stays open to aprés-pub hours, and on weekends its streets are packed with young people from all over Europe. It all adds up to what the Irish Times has called the "Temple of Boom."

Crossing the famed Ha'Penny Bridge, you arrive in the Northside. This part of town once harbored the likes of James Joyce and Brendan Behan, so you'll want to make a beeline for the James Joyce Centre and the Dublin Writers Museum. Other must-dos include the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, aglow with Picassos in a grand Palladian town house, and the grand Custom House. In this area you'll still find the oldest Georgian town houses, grassy city squares, and Dublin's two most important theaters, the Abbey and the Gate.

Dublin West is a once-industrial section of the city that stretches from Christ Church to that other holy of holies, the modern plant of the Guinness Brewery; Phoenix Park, Europe's largest public city park, borders the north bank of the Liffey. Dublin West is home to a number of other attractions, including the piquant district of the Liberties, imposing Dublin Castle, more booze at the Old Jameson Distillery, the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (home to the Irish Museum of Modern Art), and the copper-topped Four Courts.