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 made it part of the bustling quayside that supported Dublin's busy port. An eccentric figure known as Achmet Borumborad, an Irishman who passed himself off as a Turk, opened Turkish baths here in the 1770s, one of the many curiosities in its long history. The street is best remembered for a darker event, the Bachelor's Walk massacre of July 1914, when British soldiers of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, harassed by a hostile crowd after a gun-running episode, opened fire and killed several civilians. The incident hardened nationalist feeling in the months before the First World War and remains a notable episode in the city's history. Today Bachelors Walk is a busy thoroughfare lined with shops, cafes and apartments, with the boardwalk along the Liffey giving pedestrians a place to pause by the water. It lies at the heart of the city, within steps of O'Connell Street, the main shopping district and the river's most famous bridges. The street lent its name to a popular Irish television series in the early 2000s, adding a lighter modern association to its older stories. For visitors walking the quays, it is part of the riverside route that links many of central Dublin's landmarks and offers some of the best views along the Liffey. The boardwalk that runs along this stretch of the Liffey, added in the late 1990s, gives walkers a place to sit above the water and take in views of the Ha'penny Bridge and the quays opposite. The street is well served by bus and tram, with the Jervis and Abbey Street Luas stops close by, and it sits at the centre of the city's main shopping and nightlife districts. For visitors it functions less as a destination than as a thoroughfare threaded with history, where a modern shopfront may sit beneath a Georgian upper storey and a plaque marks the events of 1914 amid the everyday bustle of the quays.

Type: Street

Address: Dublin, Ireland