Things to Do in Dublin - Top Attractions, Hidden Gems & Must-See Sights

Christ Church is the older of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals, founded around 1030 by the Viking king Sitric Silkenbeard. It was rebuilt in stone in the late 12th century under the Norman lord Strongbow, then significantly enlarged through the 13th century using Somerset stone and craftsmen brought over from England. A partial collapse in the 16th century left it damaged for centuries, and the major Victorian restoration of the 1870s gave it the form it has today — including the tower, flying buttresses, and the covered stone bridge that connects the cathedral to the old synod hall.

The crypt is one of the best things about the visit. It's the oldest surviving structure in Dublin, running the full length of the cathedral, and it houses a small museum of medieval artifacts including two silver-gilt maces from the 1600s. The more peculiar exhibit is the mummified cat and rat — found locked together inside the organ pipes in the 1860s, preserved accidentally by the dry air.

The cathedral is still an active Church of Ireland church, which means Sunday services are not tourist hours. It's crowded during peak season but genuinely ancient in a way that many European churches aren't. It's among the best sights in Dublin for anyone with even a passing interest in Viking or Norman history.

Dublin Castle was the administrative center of British rule in Ireland from the 13th century until 1922 — nearly 700 years of colonial government operating from this one site. The original medieval castle was largely destroyed by a powder magazine explosion in 1684 and subsequently rebuilt in the Palladian style, which is why it looks more like a Georgian palace complex than the crenellated fortress visitors sometimes expect.

The visit covers the State Apartments, used for state occasions and EU summits, which are grand and well-preserved. The medieval Undercroft below the Upper Yard reveals the original Viking and Norman foundations, including the remains of the original Powder Tower and a section of the old city wall. The Chapel Royal, completed in 1814, has some of the finest Gothic Revival plasterwork in Ireland.

The Chester Beatty Library is also within the castle grounds — a world-class museum of manuscripts that is free and often overlooked because visitors don't realize it's here.

The Guinness Storehouse opened in 2000 inside the old fermentation building of St. James's Gate Brewery, which has been producing Guinness since Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on the site in 1759. The building was redesigned around a central glass atrium shaped like a giant pint glass — a gimmick that actually works. Over twenty million people have visited since it opened, which makes it consistently Ireland's most visited paid attraction.

The seven floors work through the four ingredients (water, barley, hops, yeast), the history of the brand, and some genuinely good advertising history. It's not a working brewery tour — the production facility is separate — but the exhibits are well-done and not as corporate-feeling as you'd expect. The sixth floor has a good whiskey bar if you want a detour from stout.

The whole thing ends at the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, where your included pint comes with 360-degree views across the Dublin skyline. As attractions in Dublin go it's touristy and not cheap, but most people leave thinking it was worth it. The views alone make a strong case.

Kilmainham Gaol was built in 1796 and operated as a working prison for 128 years. It held rebels, criminals, and famine victims over its history, then fell derelict until volunteers spent years restoring it by hand in the 1960s. That history of abandonment followed by community rescue gives the place an unusual texture — it doesn't feel manufactured.

The prison's place in Irish history is stark. The seven leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising — including Patrick Pearse and James Connolly — were executed in the stone-breakers' yard here by British firing squad. Connolly, wounded and unable to stand, was tied to a chair before being shot. The cells where they spent their final nights are on the tour, and the Victorian wing's cast-iron galleries and skylit central hall are genuinely dramatic spaces.

The guided tour is the only way in and lasts about an hour. It also appeared in The Italian Job, In the Name of the Father, and several other films.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland and the largest church in the country. It was built in 1191 on a site where Patrick is said to have baptized converts, and the Gothic structure has been altered and restored many times since. The most significant restoration happened in the 1860s, funded by the Guinness family, which is why the building looks more complete today than it did for most of the previous four centuries.

Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, was Dean of St. Patrick's from 1713 until his death in 1745. He is buried inside the cathedral next to his companion Esther Johnson — you can read his self-written Latin epitaph on the wall near the entrance. The cathedral also holds the chair and table used by Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, and banners from the former Order of St. Patrick hang along the nave.

The park surrounding the cathedral is small but well-maintained and free. Inside, the building is genuinely imposing — high vaulted ceilings, extensive medieval stonework, and a real sense of accumulated history. It's worth an hour of anyone's time among the attractions in Dublin's historic Liberties neighbourhood.

Trinity College was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I, built on the site of a dissolved Augustinian priory. For over two centuries it was a Protestant-only institution — most of Catholic Ireland was locked out until 1793. The campus has barely changed since the 18th century. The cobblestoned Front Square, the Campanile, and the long sweep of the cricket pitch give it the feel of an Oxbridge college dropped into the middle of the city.

The main draw is the Old Library, where the Book of Kells has been kept since 1661. This illuminated Gospel manuscript, created by monks around 800 AD, is extraordinary up close — the detail in every page defies belief. The Long Room above it, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and 200,000 antique books lining two floors of dark oak shelves, is one of the great rooms of Europe. The Brian Boru harp, Ireland's national symbol, also lives here.

Alumni include Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, and Edmund Burke. The college receives over two million visitors a year, making it one of the top things to do in Dublin — but the crowds are very manageable if you arrive early on a weekday.

The Custom House was designed by James Gandon and completed in 1791, built as the headquarters of Dublin's port revenue operations on the north bank of the Liffey. Gandon also designed the Four Courts, and together the two buildings define the grandeur of Dublin's Georgian riverside. The Custom House cost £200,000 to build — an enormous sum at the time — and was opposed by Dublin's merchant class who didn't want to move their operations east of the old city centre.

The facade along the quay is 114 metres long and decorated with carved heads of river gods representing Ireland's rivers, along with allegorical figures by sculptor Edward Smyth. It was deliberately designed to be seen from the river at distance, and that approach still works — crossing the Liffey from the south quays gives the best view of the building at full width. In May 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, IRA forces burned the interior for five days. Much of the original records held inside were destroyed. It was meticulously rebuilt through the 1920s and now houses a government department.

There is a small visitor centre inside on weekdays. The exterior is free to view at any time and is worth a deliberate stop rather than a passing glance — look at the carved details closely.

The Four Courts was designed by James Gandon and completed in 1802 on Inns Quay, on the north bank of the Liffey. Its central block is topped by a large copper-clad drum dome flanked by two wings, and the whole composition is one of the finest pieces of neoclassical architecture in Ireland. The building houses the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, and Dublin Circuit Court — all still functioning.

In June 1922, at the start of the Irish Civil War, the building was seized by anti-Treaty IRA forces. The Free State government shelled it across the Liffey, destroying the interior and detonating a ammunition dump that had been stored in the Public Record Office within the complex. Along with the physical damage, the explosion destroyed seven centuries of Irish historical records — parish registers, wills, deeds, and census returns — an irreplaceable loss. The reconstruction through the 1920s rebuilt the exterior but the records are gone.

The building is open to the public on weekdays during court hours — you can walk the circular central hall and observe courts in session from public galleries. It's a working courthouse first and a landmark second, which gives it an atmosphere quite different from most historic buildings. Worth pairing with the Custom House a short walk east along the quays.

The GPO was completed in 1818 and is the last major Georgian public building erected in Dublin. Its ionic-columned portico on O'Connell Street dominates the north half of the street. It functioned as a working post office — and still does — but its historical significance comes from Easter Monday 1916, when Patrick Pearse stood on its steps and read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic to a largely puzzled crowd. The GPO became the headquarters of the rising for six days before British artillery fire reduced most of it to rubble.

The bullet holes and scorch marks on the stone columns are still visible, deliberately preserved. Inside, the GPO Witness History exhibition tells the story of the 1916 Rising through the building itself, with artefacts, personal testimonies, and reconstructed scenes. The exhibition is well-designed and takes about 45 minutes to an hour. A bronze statue of the dying Cú Chulainn, the symbol of the rising, stands in the main hall.

The building remains a functioning An Post post office, which makes it an unusual combination of working institution and national monument. It's one of the most historically weighted places to visit in Dublin — the centre of a revolution that directly shaped modern Ireland.

Grafton Street runs for about 400 metres from College Green at the north end down to the top of St. Stephen's Green, and it's been Dublin's main shopping street since the 19th century. It was pedestrianised in 1982. The street has been assessed as one of the most expensive retail rents in the world, which is why it's dominated by international chains — Brown Thomas department store, Marks and Spencer, H&M — alongside a handful of older Dublin institutions.

Bewley's Oriental Café at No. 78 is the most famous of those institutions, a Victorian-tiled coffee house that opened in 1927 and has been the meeting place for Dublin writers and workers ever since. The bronze Molly Malone statue at the College Green end has been a Dublin landmark since 1988 — Dubliners have given her several unprinted nicknames. The buskers on Grafton Street are regulated and often very good; Glen Hansard of The Frames played here regularly before becoming famous.

It's among the most walked streets in Dublin and probably the least hidden — every visitor ends up here. Worth treating as a route between the Trinity College area and St. Stephen's Green rather than as a destination in itself.

The Ha'penny Bridge was cast in Shropshire, England, and assembled over the Liffey in May 1816 — making it one of the earliest cast-iron pedestrian bridges in the world. It was officially named the Liffey Bridge, but Dubliners called it by the half-penny toll charged to cross it, a name that stuck long after the toll was abolished in 1919. The ornate white ironwork and three lamp arches have become the most photographed image of Dublin.

The bridge replaced a ferry crossing that had operated at the same point for centuries. At 43 metres long and just over 3 metres wide, it's quite narrow — two lines of pedestrians pass each other with not much room to spare. That narrowness is part of the charm; crossing it in a crowd during the evening rush has its own particular Dublin energy.

It's free, it's central, and it's one of those what to see in Dublin items that actually lives up to its reputation. The view from the midpoint looking west toward the Four Courts dome is one of the better city views in Dublin, and unlike most viewpoints, it costs nothing.

Howth is a peninsula village 14 kilometres north of Dublin city centre, reachable in about 30 minutes on the DART coastal railway. The name comes from the Old Norse Hǫfuð meaning 'head' — a reminder that Vikings settled here as far back as the 9th century. Howth Castle, at the centre of the peninsula, is one of the oldest continuously occupied buildings in Ireland, dating to 1244 and still privately owned.

The harbour is the main draw for most visitors — fresh fish and chips at the pier, lobster and crab claws at the seafood restaurants along the waterfront, and the Ireland's Eye boat trips to the small island just offshore. The cliff walk around the headland takes between 1.5 and 4 hours depending on which loop you take, with views across Dublin Bay, north to the Mourne Mountains on clear days, and south to Bray Head.

Howth is one of those what to see in Dublin suggestions that actually gets better the longer you give it. A half-day is enough for the harbour and a short walk; a full day covers the cliff walk and a proper lunch. The DART goes there every 15–20 minutes from Connolly or Pearse stations.

Merrion Square was laid out in the 1760s and is one of the best-preserved Georgian squares in Europe. The surrounding terraces of brick townhouses with their coloured doors and fanlight windows are textbook Georgian — No. 1 was home to Oscar Wilde's parents, and W.B. Yeats lived at No. 82. Daniel O'Connell had his town house here, and the National Gallery of Ireland occupies the entire west side of the square.

The park itself was private for most of its history, used only by residents of the surrounding houses. It opened to the public in 1974. Inside you'll find the famous Danny Osborne sculpture of Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock in flamboyant costume, arms folded, looking appropriately ironic. There are also sculptures by Henry Moore and others scattered through the grounds, along with rose gardens and well-maintained lawns.

On summer weekends, local artists hang paintings along the railings on the park's outer perimeter — a tradition that's been going on for decades. The square is free, central, and significantly less crowded than St. Stephen's Green. It's one of the most pleasant places to visit in Dublin for a slow morning walk.

O'Connell Street was widened in the late 18th century by the Wide Streets Commission into one of the broadest urban streets in Europe, and renamed in 1924 after Daniel O'Connell, the 19th-century nationalist leader whose statue with its winged angels dominates the bridge at the southern end. The street also has statues of trade union leader James Larkin and the poet and nationalist leader Theobald Wolfe Tone.

The 120-metre steel Spire of Dublin was erected in 2003 on the spot where Nelson's Pillar once stood — the pillar was blown up by Irish republicans in 1966. The Spire is either beloved or despised depending on who you ask; it does function as a useful wayfinding point from a distance. The GPO — General Post Office — halfway up on the left, is where the 1916 leaders read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the steps.

O'Connell Street is both the symbolic spine of the capital and, in parts, fairly down-at-heel — fast food restaurants and cheap shops sit beside the historic monuments. Evening on the street during summer is lively and occasionally rowdy. It's worth walking from the bridge to Parnell Square to see the full range of monuments, and it's one of those free things to do in Dublin that every visitor ends up doing anyway.

St. Stephen's Green has been public land since the 17th century, though it was a scrubby common used for executions and grazing before Benjamin Lee Guinness funded its transformation into a Victorian park in the 1870s. The current design, with its ornamental lake, bandstand, and winding paths, dates to that period. Lord Ardilaun reopened it as a public park in 1880. At 22 acres it is the largest of Dublin's Georgian garden squares.

The park was the site of fighting during the 1916 Easter Rising, when rebels dug trenches here and were exchanged with British forces across the surrounding streets. A small monument marks that history. The rest of the park is peaceful — ornamental lake with ducks and moorhens, a garden for the blind with scented plants and braille labels, fountains, and a wide central lawn where office workers eat lunch on dry days.

The Luas tram stops on the south side, and the park entrance is directly adjacent to the top of Grafton Street, which makes it a natural pause point on a day's walk through the city centre. One of the best free sights in Dublin for a straightforward 30-minute rest.

Temple Bar is the area on the south bank of the Liffey bounded by Dame Street, Westmoreland Street, and Fishamble Street — the latter being the oldest street in Dublin, where Handel conducted the first performance of the Messiah in 1742. The cobblestoned quarter became Dublin's designated cultural district in the 1990s after the government reversed plans to demolish it for a bus station. The plan worked in some ways and created a tourist honeypot in others.

The area has genuine cultural institutions — the Irish Film Institute, the Gallery of Photography, the Project Arts Centre — sitting alongside the packed tourist pubs. The pubs are expensive and busy, particularly on weekends when stag and hen parties can take over. But during the week, especially in the morning or early afternoon, the streets have a quieter character and the cobblestones and painted facades look exactly like the Dublin postcards.

The Saturday food market in Meeting House Square is worth the visit in its own right. The Temple Bar pub itself, with its red Victorian facade on Fleet Street, is the most photographed pub in Ireland — drinks are overpriced but the interior is genuinely good-looking. Experienced travellers to Dublin treat Temple Bar as a backdrop rather than a destination.

Daniel O'Connell founded Glasnevin in 1832 specifically as a non-denominational cemetery — a radical act at a time when Catholics were forced to bury their dead in Protestant churchyards. It is now 124 acres in size and holds over 1.5 million people, making it Ireland's national cemetery. The round tower at its centre is a replica of medieval Irish towers and was built as a monument to O'Connell himself.

The graves read like a roll call of Irish history: Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Charles Stewart Parnell, Countess Constance Markievicz, Brendan Behan, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners. The cemetery museum at the entrance has a searchable database of all 1.5 million burials, which makes it possible to find almost anyone buried here. The O'Connell Crypt inside the tower is open for visits.

The guided tours are excellent and run daily — the guides know the cemetery in detail and deliver the history with real energy. It's one of those attractions in Dublin that surprises people who come expecting something morbid and leave genuinely engaged. The adjoining National Botanic Gardens make for a good combined visit.

The Iveagh Gardens are a Victorian-era park tucked between Clonmel Street and Upper Hatch Street, near the National Concert Hall. They are almost entirely surrounded by buildings, which makes them genuinely hard to find — even people who have lived in Dublin for years sometimes don't know they exist. The entrance on Clonmel Street is easy to walk past without noticing. That obscurity is exactly what makes them worth seeking out.

The gardens were designed in 1863 by Ninian Niven, the Dublin Botanic Gardens' curator, in a formal Victorian style. They have a yew maze, a rosarium, a cascade waterfall fed by a small stream, rustic grottos, and lawns bordered by herbaceous borders. Unlike St. Stephen's Green nearby, there are no traffic arteries bordering them, no tram noise — just birdsong and the occasional fountain.

Entry is free and they are a National Historic Property. The Iveagh Gardens Music Festival takes over the grounds each July with outdoor concerts — if you're in Dublin then, it's one of the best ways to see the space. For the rest of the year they are simply a quiet place that most tourists miss entirely.

Marsh's Library is Ireland's oldest public library, built in 1701 and opened in 1707 at the order of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh. It was designed by William Robinson, the same architect who built the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, and sits in St. Patrick's Close directly beside St. Patrick's Cathedral. When it opened it was the first library in Ireland that was public — meaning any gentleman could enter without being a member of a college or church.

The collection has barely changed since the 18th century. Over 25,000 books and 300 manuscripts fill the original dark oak bookcases, still fitted with the iron cages where readers were locked in with rare volumes to prevent theft. Jonathan Swift, who was Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral next door, was a governor of the library and some of his annotations survive in the margins of books. The building and its contents have a quiet, slightly eerie completeness — it has been used as a set for film productions for good reason.

Admission is €7, and the library is small enough to see properly in under an hour. Most tourists walk past it while visiting the cathedral next door without realising what it is. One of the most genuinely unusual attractions in Dublin.

The National Botanic Gardens were founded in 1795 by the Dublin Society on 19.5 hectares beside the River Tolka in Glasnevin, about 5 kilometres from the city centre. They hold approximately 20,000 living plant species and many millions of dried specimens, making them one of the most significant botanical collections in Europe. Entry is free, and they are Ireland's second most visited free attraction.

The most architecturally notable features are the Victorian glasshouses: the curvilinear glasshouse range designed by Richard Turner (who also built the Palm House in Belfast and Kew's Great Palm House) in the 1840s and 1850s, and the Great Palm House from 1884. Inside the curvilinear range, palms, cycads, and tropical plants fill a space that feels like being inside a 19th-century engineering drawing. The rose garden, the rock garden, and the water garden are each worth separate attention depending on the season.

The gardens are next to Glasnevin Cemetery, which makes for a good combined visit — unusual pairing, genuinely rewarding. The café is decent. Mornings on weekdays are almost empty, even in summer.

The Poolbeg Lighthouse has marked the mouth of the River Liffey since 1767, making it one of the oldest lighthouses in Ireland. It was rebuilt into its current form in 1820 and painted a distinctive red — the same red as the twin Poolbeg chimneys that dominate Dublin's south bay skyline and have become an unlikely symbol of the city. The lighthouse is active and automated; it's not open for visitors to enter, but reaching it is the point.

To get there you walk the Great South Wall, a 2-kilometre granite sea wall built in the 18th century to channel the Liffey's flow and prevent the river mouth from silting up. The wall is flat and exposed — wind, spray from waves in bad weather, ships passing close by. The walk takes about 25 minutes each way. At the lighthouse end, the view back toward the city is one of the best panoramas of the Dublin skyline available anywhere, with the bay spread wide and the Wicklow Mountains visible to the south.

It's completely free, genuinely off the tourist trail, and one of the best best sights in Dublin for getting a sense of the city's relationship with the sea. Locals walk and run the wall regularly.

Stoneybatter — the name comes from the Irish Bóthar na gCloch, meaning 'road of the stones' — is a northside neighbourhood in Dublin's D7 postal district. Time Out named it one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world in 2019, which delighted and mildly horrified its residents in equal measure. The neighbourhood sits between Smithfield, Grangegorman, and the North Circular Road, and its Victorian red-brick terraces have been increasingly taken over by a younger, independent-minded crowd over the past decade.

The food and drink scene is concentrated along Manor Street and Prussia Street. Craft beer bars like the Belfry and Glas sit alongside old-school Dublin pubs that haven't changed since the 1970s. The restaurants are serious — Ox, Mulberry Garden, and several other places worth booking ahead. There's also a good second-hand bookshop, independent coffee shops, and a neighbourhood feel that central Dublin's tourist areas have lost entirely.

For visitors the draw is seeing what Dublin actually looks like when it's not performing for tourists. It's a 15-minute walk from the Phoenix Park gate, which makes it a natural lunch stop after a morning in the park.

Sir Alfred Chester Beatty was an American-born mining magnate who spent his life collecting manuscripts and rare books from around the world. When he died in 1968 he left his collection to Ireland, having settled in Dublin and been made the country's first honorary citizen. The museum that bears his name opened in its current location in Dublin Castle in 2000, and was named European Museum of the Year in 2002.

The collection is extraordinary in range. It includes one of the oldest surviving New Testament manuscripts, among the earliest illustrated biographies of the Prophet Muhammad, Quranic manuscripts of exceptional quality, Chinese jade books, Japanese woodblock prints, and Egyptian papyri. The galleries are designed to be browsed slowly — the objects are small and detailed, and the contextual information is well-written.

Entry is free, which makes this one of the best deals among Dublin's attractions. Wednesday evenings are open until 8pm, making it a good option for a late afternoon visit. The rooftop garden has good views and is pleasant in good weather.

EPIC opened in 2016 in the vaulted brick cellars of the CHQ Building in Dublin's Docklands — a 19th-century bonded warehouse where goods from the docks were stored. The museum tells the story of Irish emigration: the roughly 10 million people who left Ireland between 1700 and the early 20th century, driven by famine, poverty, or opportunity, and the 70 million people of Irish descent now living outside the country.

The 20 interactive galleries cover the mechanics of emigration — who left, why, and where they went — and the individual stories of notable Irish emigrants: presidents (nine US presidents claim Irish ancestry), scientists, writers, criminals, soldiers, and musicians. The design is genuinely immersive rather than just touch-screen heavy, and the narrative arc from desperation to diaspora achievement is handled without being sentimental. It won Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards three years running.

At €18–20 it's on the more expensive end of Dublin's attractions, but most visitors take 2–2.5 hours and find it worth the price. It's in the Docklands near the 3Arena, easily combined with a walk along the riverside or a visit to the nearby Jeanie Johnston tall ship.

The Hugh Lane Gallery operates from Charlemont House on Parnell Square, a beautiful Palladian townhouse built in 1763. It was established as Ireland's first gallery of modern art in 1908, named after Sir Hugh Lane, the art dealer and collector who died on the Lusitania in 1915. Lane left his collection jointly to Dublin and London, causing a dispute between the two cities that took decades to resolve through a shared loan arrangement.

The permanent collection includes works by Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Degas, alongside a strong Irish contemporary collection. The most talked-about room is the Francis Bacon studio — the entire contents of Bacon's chaotic London studio at 7 Reece Mews were carefully catalogued and reconstructed here after his death, including 7,000 items of debris. It's one of the most unusual museum installations in Europe.

Admission to the permanent collection is free. The gallery closed for major refurbishment in September 2025, so check the website for current opening status before visiting. When open, it's one of the most underrated best sights in Dublin — small enough to see properly in 90 minutes.

IMMA is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building completed in 1684 as a home for retired soldiers — the oldest classical building in Ireland and a model for the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London. The building itself is worth the visit: a formal arcaded courtyard, a baroque chapel with original ceiling paintings, and extensive formal gardens that are free to walk through at any time.

The museum opened in 1991 and holds Ireland's largest collection of modern and contemporary art. The permanent collection includes work by Gilbert and George, Olafur Eliasson, Dorothy Cross, and a strong body of Irish contemporary painting and sculpture. IMMA is known for ambitious temporary exhibitions rather than resting on the permanent collection, and programming tends to be more adventurous than the national gallery format.

It's a 20-minute walk from the city centre or a short bus ride, which means it's less visited than it deserves to be. The grounds and courtyard are free regardless of whether there are paid exhibitions on. A genuinely worthwhile stop among Dublin's attractions for anyone interested in art made after 1960.

The Little Museum of Dublin occupies a restored Georgian townhouse at 15 St. Stephen's Green, a building owned by Dublin City Council. It opened in 2011 and built its collection almost entirely from donations by the public — over 5,000 objects collected from Dubliners who were asked to contribute items that told the story of the city in the 20th century. The result is an eccentric, affectionate, occasionally funny portrait of a city rather than a conventional history.

The objects range from U2 memorabilia and vintage advertising to political pamphlets, photographs, and domestic items from Dublin households across the century. The guided tours, which are the only way to move through the museum properly, run every 30 to 45 minutes and are the most entertaining museum tours in the city — the guides are selected for their storytelling ability as much as their historical knowledge.

At €18 for a guided tour it's not cheap, but the experience is genuinely good and the format — small group, intimate rooms, strong narrative — is quite different from the big national museums. One of the best smaller things to do in Dublin for visitors who want to understand the city rather than just its monuments.

The National Gallery was founded in 1854 and opened to the public ten years later on Merrion Square West. The permanent collection runs to about 17,000 works, though only a fraction is on display at any time. The Irish collection is particularly strong — this is the best single place to see Irish painting from the 17th century to the 20th, including major works by Jack B. Yeats, William Orpen, and Walter Osborne.

The European rooms cover Italian Baroque, Dutch masters, Spanish Golden Age, and French Impressionism. The Caravaggio here — The Taking of Christ, rediscovered hanging in a Jesuit house in Dublin in 1990 — is one of the most significant art historical finds of the 20th century and is on permanent display. There are also works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Goya.

The building has two entrances — the older Clare Street wing and the modern Millennium Wing — and the layout can be confusing on a first visit. The café is decent and affordable by Dublin standards.

Herbert Park is a 12-hectare public park in Ballsbridge, Dublin's embassy quarter, named after Sidney Herbert, the 19th-century British war minister (and friend of Florence Nightingale) after whom the surrounding streets are also named. The park was first laid out in 1911 for the Dublin International Exhibition of that year, then handed over to the city afterwards. It has a large ornamental pond with ducks and swans, a bandstand, tennis courts, and formal gardens.

The neighbourhood around it is affluent and the park reflects that — well-maintained, relatively quiet, popular with people exercising dogs and buggies rather than the tourist crowds that fill St. Stephen's Green. The RDS arena and several embassies are nearby. It's a comfortable 20-minute walk from Merrion Square through Georgian streets.

On Saturdays, the Herbert Park Hotel hosts a farmer's market beside the park that draws local producers selling cheese, bread, vegetables, and prepared food. It's smaller than the Temple Bar market but less crowded and more local in character. One of those Dublin parks that rewards visitors who get south of the Grand Canal and explore beyond the city centre.

Killiney Hill is 153 metres high and sits at the southern edge of Dublin Bay. The obelisk at the summit was completed in 1742 and was built as a famine relief project, employing local labourers during the desperate Irish Famine of 1740–41 — a century before the Great Famine. The monument has stood for nearly 300 years and is in good condition given its age and exposure.

The views from the top are legitimately spectacular. On a clear day you can see the full sweep of Dublin Bay north to Howth Head, the Wicklow Mountains to the south, and across the Irish Sea to the mountains of Wales. Killiney itself is one of Dublin's most expensive neighbourhoods — Bono, The Edge, and Enya have all lived on Killiney Hill Road — but the park at the top is open to everyone and free.

The DART train stops at Killiney station, a short walk from the park entrance. It pairs well with Dalkey village, the next stop south on the DART, which has good pubs and restaurants. Killiney is one of those places to visit near Dublin that people who come only for the city centre always regret missing.

Phoenix Park covers 707 hectares — larger than Central Park in New York, larger than Hyde Park and Regent's Park combined. It sits two kilometres west of the city centre and has been public land since the 17th century, though it was originally a deer park for the Viceroys. The Irish Government has applied to UNESCO to have it designated a World Heritage Site, which gives some indication of how seriously Dubliners take the place.

The park holds Dublin Zoo, Áras an Uachtaráin (the President's official residence), the US Ambassador's residence, and the headquarters of the Irish police. A herd of around 600 wild fallow deer roams freely across the grassland — they've been here since the 1600s and are easy to spot most mornings near the Fifteen Acres area. The 11-kilometre perimeter wall encloses enough space that you can walk for hours without doubling back.

For locals it's primarily a running and cycling park. The wide tree-lined avenues are fast and flat, and on weekend mornings the main road through the park is closed to cars.