A Victorian train shed became Ireland's biggest indoor stage. The 3Arena on North Wall Quay in the Dublin Docklands started life in 1878 as the Point Store, a railway goods depot serving the busy port; developer Harry Crosbie and Apollo Leisure converted it into the Point Theatre in 1988, and for two decades the Point was Irish shorthand for the big gig - U2 recorded part of Rattle and Hum here before the renovation, and Nirvana, Bowie, Oasis and the Spice Girls all passed through. The 2007-200.....

First opening its doors in 1879 as the Star of Erin Music Hall, the venue now known as the 3Olympia Theatre is one of Dublin's most cherished and historic stages. Founded by the music-hall impresario Dan Lowrey on Dame Street, it has worn several names across its long life, trading as Dan Lowrey's Palace of Varieties and then the Empire Palace Theatre before settling, in 1923, on the Olympia, the name it carried for almost a century until a 2021 sponsorship deal added the 3 prefix. Architectura.....

The building was showing entertainment before the United States existed. The Ambassador Theatre, at Parnell Square South on Upper O'Connell Street, was designed by John Ensor and built in 1764 as an assembly hall for the Rotunda Hospital next door - the entertainment complex existed to raise funds for the maternity hospital, a business model that kept the lights on for two and a half centuries. Moving pictures arrived in 1897 when the venue traded as the Rotund Room, and by 1910 it had become a.....

Nicknamed the Floozie in the Jacuzzi almost as soon as it appeared, the Anna Livia monument is a reclining bronze figure set in a pool of flowing water, a personification of the River Liffey that runs through Dublin. It was commissioned by the businessman Michael Smurfit in memory of his father and unveiled in 1988 to mark the city's millennium celebrations. The sculpture, by the Derry-born artist Eamonn O'Doherty, takes its name from Anna Livia Plurabelle, the character in James Joyce's Finneg.....

Built on the hallowed turf of the former Lansdowne Road ground, the Aviva Stadium is Dublin's premier sports and entertainment arena, home to the Ireland national rugby union team and the Republic of Ireland football team. The original Lansdowne Road site staged sport from 1872, making it the oldest international rugby venue in the world, before it was demolished to make way for a state-of-the-art replacement that opened in May 2010. Designed by the renowned stadium architects Populous alongsid.....

Bachelors Walk runs along the north bank of the River Liffey in central Dublin, a quayside street stretching from O'Connell Bridge westward toward the Ha'penny Bridge and Ormond Quay. It takes its name from a developer who built up the street, with records of the name reaching back to the early eighteenth century, when it was set out as an extension of the riverside quays from the 1670s. In its early days the street was home to merchants and grand terraced houses, and its riverside position mad.....

A venue within a venue, with its own front door. The Ballroom is the ground-floor room of The Grand Social at 35 Liffey Street Lower, the bar and music complex that opened in the autumn of 2010 beside the Ha'penny Bridge and quickly became a north-quays landmark. The parent venue built its name fast - nominated for IMRO Music Venue of the Year annually and named Dublin Music Venue of the Year in 2012, with a tech team nominated against rooms the size of Vicar Street and Electric Picnic - and th.....

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 .....

Few Dublin buildings have lived as many lives under as many names. The Bonnington, on the Swords Road in Drumcondra, began as Broomhill House, an ornate Italianate residence built in 1881 to a design by Albert Murray for Robert Paul, its pediments and pilasters still visible at the heart of the modern complex. The hotel era began when the house was enlarged in 1961-62 by architects Jones and Kelly as the Crofton Airport Hotel, serving the route to Dublin Airport. That incarnation earned its own.....

Ireland's largest fixed-seat theatre opened with Swan Lake and a starchitect's signature. The Bord Gais Energy Theatre, on Grand Canal Square in Dublin's Docklands, was designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened on 18 March 2010 as the Grand Canal Theatre, with the Russian State Ballet of Siberia dancing the christening performance. Libeskind conceived the building as two stages - the 2,111-seat auditorium inside and the public plaza outside - with a soaring glass facade that tilts back in diagona.....