Dublin Things to Do

In a city crammed with celebrated museums, Dublin‘s Chester Beatty Library has maintained its popularity since being voted the Best Irish Museum back in 2000. The historic library harbors a vast collection of around 22,000 items, featuring books, artworks and manuscripts ranging from 2700BC to the present day and including a number of notable rare works. Located in the grounds of Dublin Castle, the Chester Beatty Library opened in 1990 and owes its namesake, American collector Chester Beatty, for its incredible assembly of works, bequeathed to the public library after his death.

Dublin is a UNESCO City of Literature. There are only a few of them in the world (Dublin, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Reykjavik and Iowa City) so it’s significant and worth adding into your planning of a trip to Dublin. In fact, in Dublin it’s quite difficult to ignore its literary status and history. There are libraries, bookstores and museums in writers’ houses dotted all over the city, and many of the pubs claim to have been the haunts of the more famous Irish writers: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde – although many of them spent years away from Dublin and spent more time at their typewriters than in the pub. Still, even writers need a drink at the end of the working day and in Dublin that means a visit to the pub.

For a Catholic country, it is ironic that the two largest cathedrals in Dublin are both Protestant. But that’s a good indication of its long history as part of Britain before the struggle for Irish independence succeeded in the 20th century.

Ireland is famous for its writers: amongst them the confusing but brilliant James Joyce, the hilarious and infamous Oscar Wilde, Nobel Prize winning W.B. Yeats, and the avant-garde Samuel Beckett. There just seems to be something about Ireland, and about the city of Dublin that sparks the imagination. I guess that’s why they’ve put together a Writers’ Museum there.