Arts & Culture

Dublin residents are by now familiar with the UNESCO emblem on programmes and posters for the city’s many literary events, but it was only on the 26th of July 2010, that Dublin was designated a City of Literature by the cultural arm of the United Nations. The fourth city to receive such a designation, after Iowa City, Melbourne and Edinburgh, it was a recognition of Dublin’s lively contemporary literary scene built on the strong foundation laid by past masters.

One of Rathmines’ smallest buildings happens to be one of the most distinctive, for it houses a Dublin art collective, MART. The old fire-station, with a classic engine-red door facing the main street, was built in 1847 soon after Rathmines became an independent “township”. Like the magnificent Rathmines Town Hall, the station was a symbol of township independence and civic pride. The fire crew based here played a big role battling the inferno, which blazed around Sackville Street during the

Artist residencies run by Dublin City Council Dublin’s art scene is blossoming. A new wing has opened up in the National Gallery, IMMA continues to attract international work, the walls of the city are awash with commissioned street art. However, with an extremely competitive housing market and rising rents, how is the city looking after its artists? Each year, Dublin City Council puts out a call for artists to live in its four subsidised residential spaces. It offers them for periods of three to ten months. They include two cottages in the leafy, tranquil Albert College Park in Glasnevin, a Temple Bar apartment and St. Patrick’s Lodge beside the

It’s still early in the morning when I walk up the steps to the National Library. Standing on the porch, through the fence I can see TDs totter up the path next door, folders underarm, heading into the Government buildings. This Kildare Street building has housed Dublin’s main public reference library since 1890. In Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he even describes students gathering here to smoke and chat. The very first time I ever came in here, I got as far as the hall. Inside, it is quieter than even a library should be. Although, there are a few eager types waiting in the lobby. A cleaner polishes around th

The popularity of spoken word is on the rise in Dublin and one of the stars of the scene is Elayne Harrington, AKA Temper-Mental MissElayneous. She’s a rapper and slam poet from Finglas and a standout female performer on a male-dominated scene. Dublin.ie first saw Elayne perform at a women’s storytelling night in Temple Bar’s Project Arts Centre. With her trademark hairdo of curlers in her fringe, the bold red lips and her warrior stance, she was defiant and gutsy. She set her words to the beat of h

There’s a bigger picture behind the recently re-opened National Gallery wings so we went along for a visit. In 2008, Ireland was in the grip of a financial crisis like none we had witnessed before. No wonder then that more than a couple of eyebrows were raised at the awarding of a €25m grant to the National Gallery of Ireland for the renovation of its Dargan (1864) and Milltown (1903) wings. But the truth was they were both painfully in need of attention. Apart from a few cursory repairs along the way, the buildings had seen little or nothing in the way of modernisation in their century-an

Standing on O’Connell Street looking north, you have to cock your head a little to spot The Gate Theatre’s modest white-lettered sign, which sits high and unassuming over Dublin’s main thoroughfare. Yet there is something of the Grand Dame about The Gate Theatre. Ascend the theatre’s stairs from a city thick with construction, and you enter a cocoon of chandeliered ceilings, and people ‘dressed for the theatre.’ And it might be that the elegant building itself has directed the theatre’s narrative. There is a rare hush of reverence here and it has long been the place to see the great, often camp, classics: Coward, Albee, Williams and Wilde. Seating 371 audience members, the roof seemed to lower and the room seemed to swelter for the humid hysteria of Streetcar Named Desire. And where else but in that compact room could the audience members themselves feel like tense guests at a bad party for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Have we had enough of Joyce? Never! All is quiet on a sunny morning on Dublin’s North Great George’s Street when I make my way to Number 35. The Georgian building has housed the James Joyce Centre since 1996 – when the building was valiantly saved from demolition through the efforts of Senator David Norris, who is also a resident of the street. The house was once the location of a dance academy run by Professor Denis J. Maginni – a colourful Dublin character who appears often in Ulysses. He is described as wearing a “silk hat, slate frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, canary gloves and pointed pat

Jim, a Fine Gael figure formerly of the Dept. of Justice, is discussing politics with the barman. The thrust and parry of their conversation is momentarily interrupted by the arrival of a group of tourists from the Ghost Bus which tours haunted Dublin.

Francis Street is going through some big changes these days, subtle and quiet as they might be. The area is providing a home to new bars, restaurants, and shops. But mostly it’s filled with antique shops, and antiques have been the main business round here for quite a while now. “I opened about 16 years ago,” said Patrick Howard, of Patrick Howard Antiques, “though Francis Street itself has been filled with antique shops for almost 30 years.” Patrick was a fashion designer before he got into the antiques game. “I did that for most of my life, and when I got tired of it I

There’s a lot of history at Lansdowne Road. Including the fact that 73,000 pints were sold on a single day match day recently. Dublin.ie stopped over for a visit to learn more. Ireland versus England at Lansdowne Road. One of the great sporting occasions at one of the great sporting arenas. But when these sides first met here, in 1876, it wasn’t rugby they were competing at. It was athletics. We won four events to their nine victories, one of which was the tug of war. The Lansdowne grounds, established by Henry Wallace Dunlop, opened in 1873 and soon provided a home for a brand new rugby club, Lansdowne, of which Dunlop was the founder. But the place als