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One sure sign of a flourishing city is the proliferance of new bars and eateries in town. The microcosm of South Great George’s Street, moving into Aungier, Wexford and Camden Street is a good example.

The other night, driving through the Phoenix Park, I remembered. Remembered what it is I love most about Dublin. Sometimes, it’s tough to retrieve all the good things about your native city – particularly when you’re surrounded by the aftermath of a general election, the consciousness of all those things that the city gets wrong, the awareness that so much about Dublin can be challenging. But on a lovely spring evening – the first, after a dismal, murky winter – the Phoenix Park unrolled itself in all its green, luscious glory.

The newest of the Liffey bridges is the Rosie Hackett Bridge of 2014. A bridge of its time, built of stainless steel and concrete, it caters for the living city, providing a crossing for the pedestrian and for public transport. In the name alone – it is the only bridge within the city limits named for a woman – there is the kernel of the history of the modern state and the tale of an heroic woman. The oldest bridge straddles the river in the western suburb of Chapelizod, a four arch stone bridge with royal connections of old and a more modern, Joycean inspired moniker: the Anna Livia Bridge dates to 1753.

You’ve probably heard that Stoneybatter has been gentrified. They wrote about us in The Guardian, so it must be true. As the fourth generation of my family living in the neighbourhood, the notion of gentrification sits uncomfortably with me. Certainly, we have seen changes in recent years, and some of my neighbours have been given the short end of the stick since “boomtime” passed. The people still living in the O’Devaney Gardens flats were abandoned without the new homes and services that they’d been promised. Like anywhere in Dublin, rents are soaring and building companies are buying up property by the handful, which has priced some people out of the neighbourhood.

When TripAdvisor speaks, the world listens. Last year, the online resource named the Little Museum of Dublin as Ireland’s top museum in its Travellers’ Choice Award, pipping heavy-hitters like the Croke Park Stadium Tour & GAA Museum and the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street. More recently, they also bagged the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award 2016. These accolades are all the more remarkable considering that the Little Museum of Dublin is a relative newbie, having opened up its doors in 2011.

Let's be honest; the internet can be mildly intimidating (if not positively terrifying) at the best of times. What to do, then, if you're of a generation unacquainted with the World Wide Web? Recent statistics suggest that just over 50% of people aged over 60 in Ireland have never used the internet. The problem, ultimately, is that seniors can feel a type of 'digital isolation'. The solution may lie in good old-fashioned human interaction: people together, in a room, exchanging knowledge. Call it a digital dig out.

When I was a kid we would drive to Dublin once or twice a year from County Limerick and get excited as we passed under the flyovers on the dual carriageway somewhere near Naas. The Ilac Centre had glass elevators back then, and we would ride them repeatedly before going for ice-cream sundaes on a terrace near the library. I won some anti-litter art competition when I was very young with a picture colored in with markers of St Stephen’s Green covered in apple cores and cigarette butts.

All interesting Dublin landmarks tend to polarise. For every champion of The Spire, you’ll find someone who still thinks that it should never have been erected. And so too with the Poolbeg Generating Station. Even the more ardent of its champions would be hard pressed to describe it as it beautiful; its two distinctive red and white chimneys, built in 1969 and 1977 and standing at over 207 metres, poking the city’s skyline, cannot even be described as useful - they were decommissioned in 2010.

Since 1996, historian Lorcan Collins has brought visitors around Dublin’s most significant sights to tell them the story of the 1916 Easter Rising and its role in Ireland’s struggle for independence from Britain. He also has a podcast called Revolutionary Ireland and has written The 1916 Handbook for O’Brien Press. Derek O’Connor sat down with Lorcan for a chat to find out more. He discusses what to expect from his walking tour, the true blue Dublin and how he came to land his dream jo

Wanton quirkiness, perennial liveliness and an endearing touch of shabbiness have always been part of Phibsboro's innate appeal. It was where I wanted to live as a DCU student in the late nineties, instead of the gentler, more refined environs of Drumcondra where I was instead. Phibsborough was where the cool kids hung out, with an ice rink, a surfeit of charity shops and good pubs like The Hut, where the Johnny Cash Appreciation Society were in situ on a Sunday night. And then there was McGowan's, where young love was almost certainly guaranteed to bloom, especially after a few drinks.