County Dublin Guide (Baile Átha Cliath)
“The Dubs” - in the province of Leinster. County town: Dublin.
The capital - Trinity College, the Guinness Storehouse, Georgian squares and the Liffey.
Ireland’s capital and only true city of scale, Dublin packs a millennium of history into a walkable centre on the River Liffey. From the Book of Kells at Trinity College and the Guinness Storehouse to Georgian squares, literary pubs and a restless modern energy, it’s the island’s political, cultural and economic heart - and, for most visitors, the front door to the country.
Every Irish family story seems to pass through Dublin sooner or later, whether through its tenements, its docks or its emigrant ships. Founded as a Viking trading post around 841 at the dark tidal pool, the Dubh Linn, that gave the city its English name, the capital carries eleven centuries of layered history: medieval Christ Church and Dublin Castle, the grand Georgian squares of the 18th century, the bullet-scarred GPO of 1916, and the glass towers of the modern docklands. In Irish it is Baile Atha Cliath, the town of the hurdled ford, an even older name for an even older crossing of the Liffey.
Dublin's literary pedigree is unmatched for a city of its size: it was designated a UNESCO City of Literature in 2010 and claims Swift, Wilde, Joyce, Shaw, Beckett and Stoker among its own. Beyond the city centre, the county offers real variety, from the fishing harbours of Howth and Skerries to the Victorian seafront of Dun Laoghaire and the beaches of the north county. Today greater Dublin is home to well over a quarter of the Republic's population and hosts the European headquarters of many of the world's biggest technology firms, yet Moore Street traders and Sunday GAA crowds keep its older character alive.
Cities, towns and villages in Dublin
- Dublin City - The capital and largest city in Ireland, straddling the Liffey and home to Trinity College, the GPO and the Guinness brewery at St James's Gate.
- Howth - A fishing village on a rugged peninsula north of the city, famed for its cliff walk, seafood and the 1914 gun-running that armed the Irish Volunteers.
- Dun Laoghaire - A Victorian harbour town with two great granite piers, once the mail-boat gateway to Ireland and the departure point for generations of emigrants.
- Malahide - An affluent seaside town whose castle was held by the Talbot family for nearly 800 years.
- Swords - The county town of Fingal, grown from a 6th-century monastic settlement founded by St Colmcille into one of Ireland's largest towns.
- Tallaght - Once a small village on an ancient monastic site, now the bustling heart of South Dublin with its own hospital, theatre and stadium.
- Dalkey - A medieval heritage town turned upmarket coastal village, with two castles on its main street and a long roll-call of celebrity residents.
- Skerries - A north county fishing town with restored 18th-century mills and islands offshore where St Patrick is said to have landed.
- Balbriggan - A former cotton and hosiery town in north Fingal whose stockings were once famous enough that Queen Victoria wore them.
- Lucan - A Liffey-side village swallowed by the growing city, once celebrated for its spa and its demesne waterfalls.
Famous people from Dublin
- James Joyce - The author of Ulysses, born in Rathgar in 1882, who mapped Dublin so completely he claimed the city could be rebuilt from his pages.
- Oscar Wilde - The playwright and wit, born on Westland Row in 1854 and raised on Merrion Square, where his statue now reclines.
- Samuel Beckett - The Nobel laureate author of Waiting for Godot, born in Foxrock in 1906; a Liffey bridge now bears his name.
- George Bernard Shaw - Born in Portobello in 1856, the only person to win both a Nobel Prize in Literature and an Academy Award.
- Bram Stoker - The creator of Dracula, born in Clontarf in 1847 and educated at Trinity College while working at Dublin Castle.
- Jonathan Swift - The satirist behind Gulliver's Travels, born in Dublin in 1667 and later Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, where he is buried.
- Phil Lynott - The Thin Lizzy frontman raised in Crumlin, honoured with a bronze statue off Grafton Street.
- Bono - Born Paul Hewson in Dublin in 1960, the U2 singer who formed the band with schoolmates from Mount Temple Comprehensive.
- Luke Kelly - The flame-haired Dubliners balladeer from Sheriff Street, whose voice defined songs like Raglan Road and The Auld Triangle.
- Maeve Binchy - The Dalkey-born novelist whose warm tales of Irish life sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
Did you know?
- Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on the St James's Gate brewery in 1759 at an annual rent of 45 pounds.
- Handel's Messiah received its world premiere on Fishamble Street in Dublin in April 1742.
- Phoenix Park, at around 707 hectares, is one of the largest enclosed urban parks in any European capital and has a resident herd of wild fallow deer.
- The Rotunda, founded in 1745, is the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world.
- Dublin's English name comes from the Irish Dubh Linn, meaning black pool, a tidal pond where the River Poddle met the Liffey behind Dublin Castle.
- Three Nobel laureates in literature were born in Dublin: W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett.
- Dublin was designated a UNESCO City of Literature in 2010, one of only a handful of cities then to hold the title.
- St Patrick's Cathedral, founded in 1191, is the largest church in Ireland, and Jonathan Swift served as its dean for over 30 years.
Places to visit in Dublin
- Guinness Storehouse - The home of the black stuff, with a rooftop pint.
- Trinity College & Book of Kells - A 9th-century illuminated manuscript in a stunning library.
- Kilmainham Gaol - The historic prison central to Ireland’s fight for independence.
Surnames from Dublin: Byrne · Casey · Behan · Cosgrave · Ennis · Keegan · Lawless · Stokes