Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [51]
Prosperous or not, Dublin has always been unflappable in its commitment to the belief that you don’t need piles of money to enjoy yourself. Still, the transformation of the last few years – the most radical in its thousand-plus-year history – has raised some challenging questions for many Dubliners, who welcomed the city’s fortunes but were suspicious of the crass commercialism that came with it.
But the last couple of decades have done wonders for the city too. Dubliners take it as given that their city is a multicultural melting pot where Russians shop for tinned caviar, Nigerian teenagers discuss the merits of hair extensions and Koreans hawk phone cards from their cars. They are confident in the knowledge that their city is so hip that travellers from all over the world can’t wait to get here and indulge in the many pleasures it has to offer.
Because pleasure is something Dublin knows all about – from its music, art and literature to the legendary nightlife that has inspired those same musicians, artists and writers, Dublin knows how to have fun and does it with deadly seriousness. As you’ll soon find out.
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HIGHLIGHTS
Antiquated Scholars Stroll the Elizabethan cobbled grounds of Trinity College
Book-Bound Serenity Pore over ancient books and other printed wonders from all around the world in the Chester Beatty Library
Choice Addresses Enjoy Georgian gems surrounding the landscaped Merrion Square and St Stephen’s Green
History Lesson See the past up close and personal at Kilmainham Jail
Mine’s a Guinness Quaff a pint or five in one of Dublin’s many pubs and clubs Click here
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TELEPHONE CODE: 01
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Population: 1.3 MILLION
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AREA: 921 SQ KM
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HISTORY
Dublin celebrated its official millennium in 1988, but there were settlements here long before AD 988. The first early Celtic habitation, around 500 BC, was at a ford over the River Liffey, giving rise to the city’s Irish name, Baile Átha Cliath (Town of the Hurdle Ford).
The Celts went about their merry way for 1000 years or so, but it wasn’t until the Vikings showed up that Dublin was urbanised in any significant way. By the 9th century raids from the north had become a fact of Irish life, and some of the fierce Danes chose to stay rather than simply rape, pillage and depart. They intermarried with the Irish and established a vigorous trading port at the point where the River Poddle joined the Liffey in a dubh linn (black pool). Today there’s little trace of the Poddle, which has been channelled underground and flows under St Patrick’s Cathedral to dribble into the Liffey by the Capel St (Grattan) Bridge.
Fast-forward another 1000 years, past the arrival of the Normans in the 12th century and the slow process of subjugating Ireland to Anglo-Norman (then British) rule, a process in which Dublin generally played the role of bandleader. Stop at the beginning of the 18th century, when the squalid city packed with poor Catholics hardly reflected the imperial pretensions of its Anglophile burghers. The great and the good – aka the Protestant Ascendancy – wanted big improvements, and they set about transforming what was in essence still a medieval town into a modern, Anglo-Irish metropolis. Roads were widened, landscaped squares laid out and new town houses were built, all in a proto-Palladian style that soon became known as Georgian (after the kings then on the English throne). For a time, Dublin was the second-largest city in the British Empire and all was very, very good – unless you were part of the poor, mostly Catholic masses living in the city’s ever-developing slums. For them, things stayed pretty much as they had always been.
The Georgian boom came to a sudden and dramatic halt after the Act of Union in 1801, when