Everywhere you look, every corner you turn, every street you wander down, Ireland’s capital city has countless nooks and crannies that are full of, as The Dubliners singer Ronnie Drew famously sang, memories of the “rare oul’ times”.
Here, we take a look at a handful of the most famous people, places and stories from Dublin, both the city and the too-often-overlooked rural county of Dublin that surrounds it.
Millions of travelers each year see the Book of Kells and taste a pint of the black stuff at the Guinness Storehouse, but the true soul of Dublin often sits in its quieter corners, from hidden ancient holy wells hide to the whispered reverberations of revolutionary history.
1. The Heart of the City and Dublin's Most Famous Faces
Where Molly Malone Still Wheels Her Wheelbarrow
It could be argued that no figure quite captures Dublin's blend of history and humor quite like Molly Malone. She was the subject of a song which was first heard in the 1870s or ‘80s, and while there is no proof that it was based on a real Molly Malone, there’s no doubt that women like Molly were fishmongers and street hawkers (and, perhaps, prostitutes too) for centuries.
Jeanne Rynhart’s iconic bronze statue in her honor — it’s located on Suffolk Street in the city centre, but some old-timers are still known to grumble about her move from the main shopping thoroughfare on Grafton Street just around the corner — was a mainstay of photography long before Instagram was even heard of.
Unveiled for Dublin's millennium celebrations in 1988, Molly's statue has become a bit of a good luck charm. Students are known to rub her bosom as a token for exam success, and others do the same even if they’ll never do another exam in their life. With all that rubbing over the years, Molly’s chest is now a few shades brighter than the rest of her!
Dublin’s Famous Rhyming Slang
The Molly Malone status has also earned its share of nicknames over the years, including “The Tart with the Cart”, but this is no reflection on her. The truth is that nicknames are as much a part of old Dublin as any landmark, song or pint of porter.
Other monuments to get a similar treatment include the Anna Livia, variously called “The Hoor in the Sewer” and “The Floozie in the Jacuzzi” — it was relocated away from the central O’Connell Street in 2001 to the Croppies Acre, a memorial park on nearby Wolfe Tone Quay to commemorate the dead of the 1798 rebellion — and “The Stiletto in the Ghetto”, the brilliant Dublin nickname for the Spire, a 390-feet stainless steel needle situated on O'Connell Street.
Maybe the fondest remembered slang monument of all was the notorious “Time in the Slime”, the sunken Millennium Clock that was briefly set into the river Liffey beside O’Connell Bridge in 1999 as a countdown to the turn of the century, only to be removed due to technical problems — one of which was the fact that the waters were too murky for the time to be visible!
The Anna Livia monument, known to Dublin locals as “The Floozie in the Jacuzzi” and “The Hoor in the Sewer”
Clerys Clock: Dublin's Cupid
For generations of Dubliners, and the many thousands who moved to the capital from provincial towns and villages around Ireland, the words “I'll meet you under Clerys clock” sparked romance, anticipation, and occasionally a bit of heartbreak too.
Clerys clock. Image via Can Pac Swire / Flickr Creative Commons
The grand timepiece outside the now defunct department store was Dublin's unofficial matchmaking spot for over a century. During the 1950s and 60s, when dances at nearby Gresham Hotel drew crowds of young people, Clerys clock witnessed countless first dates, proposal plans gone awry — and, it must be said, a fair amount of waiting in vain for a promised date to arrive.
Clerys store closed in 2015, but the building has been redeveloped as Clerys Quarter, and the clock itself got a much-needed makeover as part of the work.
Under Clerys’ clock: Dublin landmark restored
2. Bloodied Fields and Bloodied Streets
Croke Park: Place of Dreams and Tragedy
Croke Park stands as perhaps the world's most remarkable amateur sporting arena. This 82,300-capacity stadium, home to the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), was built not by professional sports tycoons but by a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving Irish games.
The history of this great venue, just a hen’s race north of the city centre, echoes with both triumph and tragedy.
It is the venue for the All-Ireland football and hurling finals each year, when tickets become the hottest property in town as men, women and children from all over the world try to get there to cheer their county on. Croke Park — or Croker as it’s fondly known — has also staged international soccer and rugby matches in recent years
Perhaps most poignantly of all, the stadium hosted the Ireland-England Six Nations rugby match in 2007, when tears flowed on all sides to hear the national anthems of home side and visiting nation. The occasion came a little less than 90 years after one of the bloodiest days in Dublin’s history: on November 21, 1920, during the War of Independence, British forces opened fire there during a Dublin-Tipperary football match, killing 14 civilians, including the Tipperary football captain Michael Hogan. Today and forever more, Croker’s Hogan Stand commemorates his memory.
It was only in 2005 when the GAA lifted its ban on foreign sports such as rugby and soccer being played at its venues. And an almost century-long circle was closed in 2011 when Queen Elizabeth II visited, becoming the first British monarch ever to set foot in what many consider Ireland's cathedral of sport.
The GPO and Beyond: A Revolutionary History
O’Connell Street’s General Post Office, known to one and all as the GPO, stands as the iconic symbol of the 1916 Rising, the true web of revolution spread throughout the county.
First opened in 1818, it was here nearly 100 years later where the Irish rebels of the Easter Rising made their HQ, and outside the building, on 24 April 1916, Rising leader Patrick Pearse read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in one of the most iconic moments in Irish history.
The GPO in Dublin’s city centre. Photo: William Murphy / Infomatique / Flickr Creative Commons
While evidence of the rebellion is still visible at the GPO — look closely and you will see bullet-holes in some of its famous columns — it is far from the only revolutionary landmark in the city.
Davy Byrne’s pub, just off Grafton Street, hosted intelligence meetings of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in its upstairs rooms, with revolutionaries Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith among its many customers.
Dating only from the 1800s, however, Davy Byrne’s is a youngster in Dublin pub terms. The oldest of all is the Brazen Head, which is said to date all the way back to the year 1198, and is still going strong with live music every night.
The Well Where Cromwell Washed His Feet
Deep in the countryside of north County Dublin, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city, between the town of Balbriggan and the village of The Naul lies, somewhere, an ancient holy well.
While the exact location of the well now may be lost to time — or lost to the knowledge of a few locals — there is plenty of social record pointing to its history.
A project in the 1930s by the Irish Folklore Commission and preserved now by Dúchas asked schools all over Ireland to collect stories, histories and traditions to preserve Irish oral history. And in Balscadden, close to the Irish Sea, the stories had a recurring theme — a local tradition that told of the time Oliver Cromwell passed this way.
Cromwell held the title, a little bit laughably, of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland, he didn’t do much protecting the locals. In fact, he led a reign of terror, suppressing the Catholic majority and leading the 1649 campaign that led, in part, to almost 20% of the Irish nation being wiped out — famine and plague being other causes of mass deaths.
In Balscadden, the schools’ history records, in gorgeous handwritten ink, the local lore of the time Cromwell visited the area while staying at nearby Gormanston Castle:
“Cromwell … came to this well and profaned it by washing his feet in it. He also allowed his horses to pollute the well. The well dried up and remained so for many years. A priest visited well later and blessed it. The water returned, and now it is always overflowing.”
3. Dublin’s Hidden Histories
St. Doulagh's: The Hermit's Legacy
Near the modern bustle of Malahide Road stands St. Doulagh's, which offers a window into Ireland's ancient religious traditions.
Named for a 6th-century hermit about whom little is known for sure nowadays — apart from his November 17th feast day — the church represents a uniquely Irish form of early Christianity. Ireland's anchorites, religious hermits who followed Eastern rather than Western Christian traditions, set Ireland's early church apart from the rest of Western Europe.
A granite cross at the entrance hints at pre-1300 origins while the baptistery is the only detached example surviving in Ireland. The walls here once bore 17th-century frescoes depicting St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Doulagh himself, but they were defaced by Sir Richard Bulkeley after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The Working-Class Heroes of Inchicore
Hidden in plain sight in the south Dublin suburb of Inchicore is a building that houses a remarkable story of working-class education, community spirit, and social progress.
The former Great Southern and Western Railway Works library, established in 1886, wasn't just Dublin's first working-class library — it was in many ways the beating heart of one of Ireland's most innovative industrial communities.
Part of what locals still call "the Institute," the library was built within a remarkable 73-acre industrial campus that revolutionized Irish working-class life. When the GS&WR began constructing its engineering works in 1846, Inchicore was little more than fields but within a decade, it had transformed into a self-contained industrial village where every aspect of workers' lives was considered.
As well as books, the Institute housed a dispensary for medical care and a tailor's hall where local women earned independent incomes making railway workers' uniforms — likely a radical concept for 1850s anywhere, never mind 1850s Ireland.
Statues of Poets and Songmen
Phil Lynott’s statue, like Molly Malone just off Grafton Street in Dublin city centre, commemorates one of the greatest of all rockers. Lynott, the lead singer of the band Thin Lizzy, may have died all too young, at the age of just 36 in 1986, but his music lives on through iconic sounds of the 70s such as “The Boys are Back in Town” and “Jailbreak”.
He’s not the only bard to be commemorated in stone in Dublin city. Luke Kelly, the great Irish folk singer, he of the mop of curly red hair and the toothy grin, died at just 40 in 1984. A large marble must of his famous head was erected in 2019 in his old haunt in the north inner city.
And just across the river, on the banks of the royal canal, sits another statue of an Irish wordsmith. This time it’s Patrick Kavanagh and the statue is, literally, sitting.
He was not a Dubliner — he was born and raised in the fields of County Monaghan — Kavanagh nevertheless became associated with his adopted city, where he lived for almost 30 years before his death in 1967.
The statue is of Kavanagh seated and seemingly deep in thought, looking across his beloved Grand Canal, which he immortalized in the poem “Canal Bank Walk”:
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The statue of Patrick Kavanagh next to the Grand Canal © Copyright Tom Courtney and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Conclusion
Dublin has many famous facades but there are also true treasures that lie beyond the street corners and landmarks that everyone knows.
In its fair city, where the girls are still so pretty, Molly Malone still wheels her wheelbarrow, and the broad and narrow streets carry echoes and whispers of a history that still lives in the hearts and minds of all who pass through.
And when you’re there, why not stop and sit
Each corner tells a story of resilience, creativity, and connection - particularly with Irish-America. Whether you're tracing family roots or seeking authentic experiences, these lesser-known sites offer glimpses into the real Dublin, where history isn't just preserved in museums but lives on in communities, crafts, and customs passed down through generations.
