Things to do

Just outside the city, there’s something extreme going on. Tyres hit gravel and muck at speed. Hearts thump in chests. And adrenaline pumps through veins. To find out more, we spoke to Niall Davis. Introducing Biking.ie Biking.ie offers mountain bike rental, lessons, tours, youth camps and bike maintenance workshops to beginners and experienced bikers. With two locations – one in the Dublin Mountains at Ticknock and one in the Wicklow Mountains at Ballinastoe – Biking.ie is the perfect base for beginners and expert mountain bikers alike. Its hubs can be used as an information point or a meeting place for people starting their spins. They do tea, coffee

Glasnevin cemetery is the dead centre of Dublin, with 1.5 million people buried there. In fact, there are more people below ground in Glasnevin than above ground in all of Dublin. This is no ordinary cemetery, with a list of historical figures buried here including Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, Charles Stewart Parnell and Arthur Griffith. Conor Dodd, Historian at Glasnevin, and Luke Portess, Head of Digital, tell us some of the lesser known, more unusual stories about Glasnevin. Dublin.ie: The cemetery is a working cemetery, with funerals and burials on a daily basis, but there

Dubliners know where to find Armageddon, The Whore of Babylon and The Seven Headed Beast. They’re in the Book of Revelations. But where would you find the actual book? Well it so happens that most probably the earliest copy in existence (it’s called Papyrus 47) is right here in Dublin, at the Chester Beatty. It’s just one of the myriad treasures of this museum. There are Egyptian Books of the Dead, Japanese picture scrolls, Art Deco French book bindings: the range and depth of the collection is extraordinary. Chester Beatty himself – the man who made this collection – was a mining magnate. Jenny Siung, Head of Education

Do the vaults really contain restless spirits? St Michan’s Church is situated behind Dublin’s Four Courts on Church Street, just around the corner from the Jameson Distillery in Smithfield. It was originally founded in 1095 and is the oldest parish church on the northside of Dublin. It was rebuilt in 1685 and contains a large pipe organ, which Handel is said to have played during the first ever performance of his ‘Messiah’. The interior has changed little since Victorian times and the main church still holds mass every second Sunday, but what lies beneath is

‘We shape our buildings’, said one-time Dublin resident Winston Churchill, ‘thereafter they shape us’. So what shape are we Dubliners in? On the eve of Open House, the Irish Architecture Foundation’s phenomenally successful annual festival, Dublin.ie spoke to the IAF’s Laura Wolfe and Jennifer Halton. Dublin.ie: Open House opens the doors of special buildings all over Dublin and beyond to the public. What’s that about, Laura? Laura: It’s about giving Dublin people back ownership of their whole city. It’s saying to them ‘you know the city, you use the city, here’s the chance to rethink where you live’.

A closer look at Dundrum Inner-city resident Leopold Bloom, the hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses, dreams of moving out to leafy suburbia. He has his eye on Dundrum, south of the city, where he imagines living in a bungalow called “Flowerville” or perhaps “Bloom Cottage”. Over a century later, Dundrum is still an attractive place to live. Introducing Dundrum shopping centre If you’re coming from the city by road, the first sign of Dundrum is its magnificent bridge, which carries the Luas tram line over the busy Taney Road junction. It is named after

Montpelier Hill, better known as The Hell Fire Club to Dubliners, is a lovely place for a weekend walk. It has a variety of short forest trails and provides wonderful views of the city from the south-west. On the weekends you can find it busy with urbanites escaping the city and dogs running free. At the top sits a large hunting lodge where, if the stories are to be believed, some very strange things have happened. Originally there was a passage grave with a cairn at the top of the hill. Speaker Conolly, one of the wealthiest men in Ireland, built the hunting lodge on its site. Conolly is said to have destroyed the cairn while building the lodge, using a standing stone as the lintel of the fireplace.

Perhaps you seek refuge from the clamour of the city? Then head away from Stephen’s Green. Walk up Harcourt Street. Take a left. And approach the gates at the end of Clonmel Street. Enter. And breathe. Around you are green lawns. Trees, Fountains. Statues. A rose garden. A maze. A grotto. An elegant promenade. And, crucial to our purpose here, not very many people. Indeed, mid-afternoon of an autumn’s day you may very well have the place to yourself. The place is Iveagh Gardens. It’s a Victorian park. So is Stephen’s Green, of course. But the difference in the atmosphere is pronounced – a direct result of its history.

In a random (and completely unscientific) study I asked several people to name five of the best known statues in Dublin. Merrion Square’s Oscar Wilde was name checked, as was Patrick Kavanagh’s canal bank sit‐down.

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.

‘Ah, if these walls could speak…’ The clichéd but always heart-felt phrase we’ll forever use to reference intriguing historical sites, with the underlying assumption being that we will never learn these forgotten tales. In the case of Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, however, the people who lived, worked and were schooled here over the last two centuries will be given a voice. From military accommodation to a prison, then social housing and a school, Richmond Barracks has had several incarnations, all of them played out to the backdrop of some of the nation’s most turbulent times.