10 Top Places to Visit in Dublin

Dublin Castle has stood on this site since 1204 and was the seat of British rule in Ireland for over 700 years, until the formal handover to Michael Collins in 1922. Today it functions as a major government complex used for state receptions and presidential inaugurations, but most of the State Apartments, the medieval undercroft, and the Chapel Royal are open to the public.

A guided tour takes you through the gilded Throne Room, the Picture Gallery, and St Patrick's Hall, where Irish presidents are inaugurated. Below ground, the excavated Viking-era foundations and a section of the original moat give a tangible sense of Dublin's medieval origins. The Dubh Linn Garden behind the castle, planted on the site of the dark pool that gave Dublin its name, is a quiet break from the city's busier streets.

Pro Tip: Combine a Dublin Castle visit with the next-door Chester Beatty Library, one of the finest free museums in Europe, with a rooftop garden that gives a good south-facing view over the castle gardens.

Christ Church Cathedral, founded around 1030 by the Hiberno-Norse king Sitric Silkenbeard, is the older of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals and the seat of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough. The current building dates largely from a heavy Victorian restoration in the 1870s, but it preserves a Romanesque doorway and stone effigies from the original Norman rebuild of 1180.

The highlight is the 12th-century crypt, one of the largest medieval crypts in Britain or Ireland, which now houses the cathedral treasury, the mummified cat and rat known affectionately as Tom and Jerry, and a Stuart-era set of stocks. The covered footbridge across Winetavern Street connecting the cathedral to Dublinia, the interactive Viking and medieval history museum, is the only enclosed footbridge in the city.

Pro Tip: A combined Christ Church Cathedral and Dublinia ticket is the best way to make sense of medieval Dublin in a single visit - allow at least 90 minutes for both, ideally before lunch when school groups have moved on.

St Patrick's Cathedral, founded in 1191 on the spot where the patron saint is said to have baptised converts at a well, is the largest church in Ireland at 91 metres long and the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland. Its 43-metre spire dominates the skyline of the Liberties just south of the medieval core.

Inside, the cathedral is a national pantheon as much as a working church. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and dean here for 32 years, is buried in the south aisle alongside his companion Stella, and his death mask, pulpit, and library all survive on site. The cathedral choir, founded in 1432, took part in the world premiere of Handel's Messiah in 1742 and still performs sung Evensong on most weekdays.

Pro Tip: Time your visit to catch the 17:30 weekday Evensong, when the choir sings under the medieval banners of the Knights of St Patrick - no separate ticket is required and the standard cathedral entry fee covers it.

Temple Bar is the cobbled riverside quarter between Dame Street and the Liffey, named after the Temple family who owned the land in the 17th century rather than after any single pub. Its narrow lanes are home to galleries (the Gallery of Photography on Meeting House Square is the standout), live music pubs that pack out from afternoon until the early hours, a weekend food and book market, and roughly 30 bars within a five-minute walk.

The neighbourhood is unapologetically touristy and pints are typically several euro more expensive here than elsewhere in the city, but the live trad music sessions in places like The Auld Dubliner and Oliver St John Gogarty run from afternoon into the early hours and are worth the markup once or twice. Daytime, the area is more relaxed and works well for browsing independent shops on Cow's Lane and Crown Alley.

Pro Tip: For a more local pub experience at lower prices, walk five minutes south to Camden Street (try Anseo or Against the Grain) or west to the Liberties, where pubs like The Long Hall offer the same atmosphere with smaller crowds.

The Guinness Storehouse at St James's Gate is consistently the most visited paid attraction in Ireland, drawing roughly 1.7 million visitors a year. The seven-floor exhibition is built inside a former fermentation plant and shaped like a giant pint glass, and it takes you from the four ingredients of stout through 250 years of brewing, advertising history, and cooperage.

Allow two to three hours for the full route, which ends in the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, where your included pint is paired with a 360-degree view over the city, the Wicklow Mountains, and Dublin Bay. A more recent extension, the Guinness Academy, lets you pour your own pint to the official six-step method and walk out with a printed certificate.

Pro Tip: Pre-book the earliest morning slot online for a meaningful discount over the on-the-day rate, and skip the on-site restaurant in favour of a pub lunch at The Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub (established 1198), a 10-minute walk back towards the river.

Kilmainham Gaol, opened in 1796 and decommissioned in 1924, is the single most important site for understanding modern Irish history. The leaders of every major rebellion against British rule, from Robert Emmet in 1803 through the 1916 Easter Rising signatories to the Irish Civil War combatants of 1922 to 1923, passed through these cells, and most were executed in the gaol's stone-breaker's yard.

Tours are guided only, last about 90 minutes, and move from the East Wing's Victorian panopticon (instantly recognisable from In the Name of the Father and The Italian Job) to the small museum, the chapel where Joseph Plunkett married Grace Gifford hours before his execution, and finally the yard itself, with two simple crosses marking the execution spots.

Pro Tip: Tickets sell out 4 to 6 weeks ahead in summer - book the moment you confirm your Dublin trip. Pair the gaol with the adjoining Irish Museum of Modern Art at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham for a full half-day in this part of the Liberties.

Phoenix Park, at 707 hectares, is roughly twice the size of New York's Central Park and one of the largest enclosed city parks in Europe. It contains the official residence of the President of Ireland (Aras an Uachtarain), the residence of the US Ambassador, the 62-metre Wellington Monument obelisk, and a free-roaming herd of around 600 fallow deer descended from a 17th-century stock.

For a half-day visit, rent a bike at the Parkgate Street entrance and follow the Chesterfield Avenue spine 4 km to the Papal Cross, with side trips to the Victorian People's Flower Gardens and the Phoenix Monument at the centre. Dublin Zoo, founded in 1831, sits inside the park and is one of the oldest zoos in the world.

Pro Tip: Free 75-minute tours of Aras an Uachtarain run on Saturdays year-round but must be booked in advance through the Office of Public Works - they are one of the few opportunities to see inside a working European presidential residence at no cost.

EPIC, opened in 2016 inside the vaulted CHQ Building on Custom House Quay, has been voted Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards three times and is described as the world's first fully digital museum. Its 20 themed galleries tell the story of the 10 million people who emigrated from Ireland over the last 1,500 years and the global influence they have had on politics, science, sport, music, and food.

The exhibition design is interactive throughout, with motion-sensitive walls, holograms, and touch-screen passports that you stamp as you move through each gallery, making it the most family-friendly indoor attraction in central Dublin. Allow about 90 minutes for the full route, longer if you spend time in the family-history Centre on the lower ground floor.

Pro Tip: A combined EPIC and Jeanie Johnston tall ship ticket, available at the museum entrance, is the most efficient way to pair the emigration story with a guided tour of an actual 19th-century famine-era ship moored two minutes' walk away on the quay.

The National Museum of Ireland Archaeology branch on Kildare Street, opened in 1890, holds the country's finest collection of prehistoric and early-medieval artefacts and is free to enter. Its Treasury room alone contains the Ardagh Chalice, the Tara Brooch, and the Derrynaflan Hoard, three of the most important pieces of insular Celtic metalwork ever found.

Equally arresting is the Kingship and Sacrifice gallery, which displays four preserved Iron Age bog bodies dating from around 400 to 200 BC, alongside an explanation of the ritual sacrifices that placed them in the bogs. Upstairs galleries cover Viking and medieval Dublin, with longship-era swords, walrus-ivory gaming pieces, and reconstructions of waterfront houses excavated at Wood Quay.

Pro Tip: All four branches of the National Museum of Ireland (Archaeology, Decorative Arts at Collins Barracks, Natural History, Country Life in Mayo) are free to enter, so this is the best rainy-day backup plan in central Dublin - note that the building closes on Mondays, so plan around that.