A little-used pool hall under a canal-side pub became one of Dublin's most dependable small venues. Bello Bar sits in the basement of The Lower Deck at 1 Portobello Harbour, on the bank of the Grand Canal, and opened for business in 2013. The origin story is domestic: Shane Masterson and his partner Anna Gallagher were living above the pub when the publican, looking to breathe life into the quiet downstairs room, suggested they turn it into a music venue. They did the work themselves and never .....

Dating back to a house built around 1700, Bushy Park is a large suburban park in Terenure on the south side of Dublin, covering some twenty hectares of woodland, ponds and playing fields. The original residence, first known as Bushe's House after its builder Arthur Bushe, was renamed Bushy Park by a later owner in 1772, possibly after the royal park of the same name in London. The estate grew when Abraham Wilkinson added almost forty hectares in 1791 and gave the property as a dowry when his da.....

Located within the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre in central Dublin, Chillers on the Green is a restaurant, bar and lounge that doubles as a late-night and nightlife venue. It blends Afro-Caribbean influenced food and cocktails with DJ-led evenings, occupying a unit inside one of the city's landmark shopping centres at the top of Grafton Street. The result is a hybrid space that works as a daytime and evening dining room and shifts into a bar and lounge atmosphere later in the week. The ven.....

Founded around 1030 by the Hiberno-Norse king Sitric Silkenbeard and the first bishop of Dublin, Dunan, Christ Church Cathedral is the older of the city's two medieval cathedrals and among its oldest buildings. The original church, built on high ground overlooking the Viking settlement at Wood Quay, was a wooden structure that served as one of just two churches for the whole early city. In the 1170s, following the Anglo-Norman invasion, the cathedral was rebuilt in stone under the impetus of Ri.....

Christchurch Place is the open square and short street that fronts Christ Church Cathedral on the rise above Wood Quay, marking one of the oldest inhabited corners of Dublin. The ground here was the heart of the Viking and medieval city, and the modern road follows lines of settlement that stretch back more than a thousand years. For much of its history the area around the place was a dense warren of medieval lanes and houses, swept away in stages by road widening and the redevelopment of the t.....

For seven centuries the centre of English and later British rule in Ireland, Dublin Castle stands on a ridge in the heart of the old city, on a site fortified since Viking times. The first stone castle was built from 1204 on the orders of King John, occupying the south-eastern corner of the walled medieval town. Little of the medieval fortress survives above ground, much of it lost to a fire in 1684, and the complex seen today is largely an elegant eighteenth-century creation of courtyards, sta.....

From candle-making to calligraphy, cookery to pottery, the workshops and classes on offer around Dublin give visitors a way to make something with their hands rather than simply look. Clustered in the city centre, including around Drury Street and the creative quarter, these short hands-on sessions have become a popular alternative to conventional sightseeing. The range is wide and constantly changing, taking in candle and soap making, perfume blending, jewellery and silversmithing, life drawin.....

The contractors worked twenty-four-hour shifts and built it in twenty-five weeks. The Gaiety Theatre on South King Street, off Grafton Street beside St Stephen's Green, opened on 27 November 1871 with the Lord Lieutenant as guest of honour and a double bill of She Stoops to Conquer and the burlesque La Belle Sauvage. The theatre was the project of brothers John and Michael Gunn, whose family ran a music business on Grafton Street; they hired C.J. Phipps, the leading theatre architect of the day.....

Among Ireland's most visited paid attractions, the Guinness Storehouse draws huge numbers of visitors each year to the home of the country's most famous export. It occupies a former fermentation house at the heart of the St James's Gate brewery, where Arthur Guinness signed a now-legendary nine-thousand-year lease in 1759. The building itself is a landmark of industrial architecture, erected between 1902 and 1904 as the first multi-storey steel-framed structure in Ireland, built in the manner o.....

Part gallery, part cafe-bar and part dancefloor, Hen's Teeth is an independent cultural events venue tucked into the Blackpitts area of Dublin 8, in the heart of the historic Liberties. Born from DIY pop-ups and a crowdfunding campaign, it set out to answer a simple question about the shortage of independent cultural spaces in the city, and the result is a roughly 2,600-square-foot open-plan room that can flip from a bright daytime cafe to a buzzing late-night party without ever losing its ident.....