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 twentieth century. The construction of the Dublin Corporation civic offices on the adjoining Wood Quay in the 1970s and 1980s, over the objections of campaigners trying to save the excavated Viking remains beneath, was one of the city's most heated planning controversies. Today the place is a busy junction where Lord Edward Street, Nicholas Street and the quays meet, carrying traffic past the cathedral toward the Liberties and the old city. The cathedral's distinctive covered stone bridge arches over the road, linking it to the building that now houses the Dublinia heritage exhibition. The surrounding streets hold a concentration of Dublin's earliest landmarks, with Dublin Castle, the medieval St Audoen's Church and the city walls all close by. A walk through the place is effectively a walk across the footprint of the original walled town. Plaques and interpretive markers in the area point to the layers of history beneath the pavement, where archaeological digs uncovered some of the richest Viking-age finds in Europe. Many of those finds are now displayed in the National Museum on Kildare Street. While not an attraction in itself, Christchurch Place is a focal point for visitors exploring medieval Dublin, sitting at the meeting of the cathedral, the castle quarter and the Liberties. Its blend of ancient foundations and modern thoroughfare captures the way the old city and the new sit directly on top of one another. Several walking tours of medieval and Viking Dublin begin or pause here, using the place as a vantage point from which to picture the long-vanished walled town. Information panels and the nearby city-wall remnants at Cook Street and St Audoen's help visitors reconstruct the layout. Though traffic now dominates, the rise still commands much the same view over the river that drew the first settlers, and standing beneath the cathedral's arch it is easy to sense how compact and defensible the original city once was.

Type: Street

Address: Dublin, Ireland