Four days in Dublin: not a grand capital, and far better company than one
Three nights in the centre. Trinity and the national collections on one day, the gaol and the brewery on the next, and nothing more than half an hour apart on foot.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Dublin
- Places
- 9 across 4 days
Dublin is not a city of set pieces. There is no boulevard to walk down, no skyline to photograph, and the tallest thing in the middle of it is a stainless steel spike. What there is instead is a very small capital, mostly two and three storeys high, where the good part of the day is the bit between the things you meant to see.
That works in a visitor's favour. Almost everything worth your time sits inside a rectangle about two kilometres across, which means four days here are not spent in transit. You can see the Book of Kells and the Tara Brooch before lunch and still have an afternoon.
The history is closer to the surface than in most European capitals, and much more recent. A post office on the main street was shelled in 1916, the men who held it were shot in a prison yard three kilometres west, and both buildings are open, cheap to get into, and full of people who are still working out how they feel about it.
Highlights
- The Book of Kells, then a room of Bronze Age gold ten minutes away and free
- Kilmainham Gaol, where the Easter Rising ended, on a guided tour you must book
- A brewery with a glass bar at the top of it and the whole city underneath
- A trad session in Smithfield, in a pub that calls itself a drinking pub with a music problem
Where to stay
Dublin, three nights
Dublin was the second city of the British Empire for most of the eighteenth century, which is why the middle of it is Georgian: flat brick fronts, fanlights over the doors, squares with railings. Then the money and the parliament went to London in 1801 and the grand houses were let out room by room, which is the other half of the story and the more interesting one.
It is a talking city rather than a looking one. Shopkeepers, bus drivers and the person beside you at the bar will all start a conversation, and the correct response is to have one. Four days is long enough to stop finding that startling.
Day by day
Day 1 in Dublin
The Liffey, and a session in Smithfield
Book nothing today. The coach in from the airport takes about forty minutes and drops you within a few streets of the river, and the first evening is better spent finding your bearings than queueing for anything.
The Liffey splits the city and every walk sooner or later crosses it. Start on the quays, work west along the water as the light goes, and eat before the pubs get going.
- 17:00
Ha'penny Bridge
ArchitectureThe white iron footbridge everybody photographs. It opened in 1816 and charged a halfpenny to cross, which is the name that stuck long after the toll went.
- 18:30
Dinner off the quays
EatOne street back from the river, and out of Temple Bar. Dublin eats early by continental standards and kitchens thin out after nine.
- 21:00
The Cobblestone
OtherTwenty minutes west in Smithfield, and the reason to walk that far: musicians sit in the front bar most nights and play to each other rather than to the room. No cover charge, no set list, and no talking over it.
With more time: An afternoon arrival leaves time for the walk south through Temple Bar and up Grafton Street, where the buskers are and where the city does its shopping.
Day 2 in Dublin
Trinity, the Treasury and Dublin Castle
The best two hours in Dublin cost about twenty euro and about nothing, in that order. Trinity charges to get into its Old Library; the national museum ten minutes away charges nothing at all and holds better things.
Go early to Trinity. The timed slots fill from mid morning and the Long Room, a barrel-vaulted hall of two hundred thousand old books, is a different experience with thirty people in it than with three hundred.
The afternoon is one building and its gardens, five minutes west, where the British administration ran Ireland from until 1922.
- 09:30
Trinity College
CultureA Georgian campus in the middle of the city, founded in 1592 and still a working university, so most of it is off limits. What you are here for is the Old Library: the Book of Kells, written around 800, with two pages showing at a time, and the Long Room upstairs.
- 11:45
National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology
CultureFree, and better than anything you will pay for today. Prehistoric gold collars, bog bodies with their fingernails intact, and the Treasury, where the Ardagh Chalice and the Tara Brooch show what Irish metalworkers could do while most of Europe had given up.
- 13:30
Lunch on Kildare Street
EatThe streets between the museum and the castle are full of lunch places aimed at office workers rather than visitors, which is exactly what you want at half one.
- 15:00
Dublin Castle
HistoricThe seat of British rule in Ireland for seven centuries, handed over in 1922. The guided tour covers the medieval undercroft and the Chapel Royal; the State Apartments alone cost less and you walk them at your own speed.
With more time: In the castle gardens there is a free museum of illuminated manuscripts, Qur'ans and East Asian art, left to Ireland by an American mining millionaire who fell out with the British Museum. It is the best small museum in the city and almost nobody walks the extra two minutes to it.
Day 3 in Dublin
St Patrick's, Kilmainham and St James's Gate
A day heading west, in a straight line, ending with a pint. Start with the cathedral fifteen minutes south west of the centre, then go out to the gaol, then work back east to the brewery, which sits between the two.
The gaol tour is the hard part of the day and the reason to come to Dublin at all if you have any interest in how the state got here. Book it before you fly.
The brewery afterwards is not a reverent experience and does not pretend to be. It is a very large advertisement with a good view, and after Kilmainham you will want one.
- 09:30
St Patrick's Cathedral
ReligiousFounded in 1191 and rebuilt into confident Victoriana in the 1860s, so anything that looks medieval probably is not. Jonathan Swift was dean here from 1713 to 1745 and is buried in the floor of the nave.
- 10:30
West to Kilmainham
TravelTwenty minutes on a bus west along the quays, or ten in a taxi. Leave time: the tours run to the minute and they do not hold slots.
- 11:00
Kilmainham Gaol
CultureA prison from 1796 to 1924, and the place the leaders of the 1916 Rising were shot. Guided tour only, every half hour, booked in advance. The Victorian wing is the photograph; the yard at the end is the reason people go quiet.
- 13:00
Lunch in Kilmainham
EatA few cafes sit around the gaol and the old Royal Hospital next to it. Eat before you walk back east, because there is nothing between here and the brewery gates.
- 14:45
Guinness Storehouse
CultureThe St James's Gate brewery still works, though this part of it is an exhibition rather than a production line. Your ticket includes a pint upstairs in a glass drum of a bar, which has the widest view in the city attached to it.
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With more time: Between the gaol and the brewery lies the Liberties, the old distilling quarter, where several small whiskey distilleries now run tours. One of those instead of the brewery makes for a quieter and usually cheaper afternoon.
Day 4 in Dublin
The GPO, and coffee on Grafton Street
A short last morning on O'Connell Street. The Rising started here, and the bullet marks are still in the portico columns if you look from the right angle.
Then ten minutes south across the river for coffee, and out. Airport coaches leave from the middle of O'Connell Street every few minutes, so you can cut this as fine as you dare.
- 09:30
GPO Museum
OtherStill a working post office, and the building the rebels seized in Easter 1916, where Pearse read the Proclamation of the Republic from the front steps. The museum inside tells the week in order, which is the clearest account of it you will get anywhere.
- 11:00
Bewley's Café
CultureA Dublin institution on Grafton Street, and the right last stop: coffee, a sticky bun, and Harry Clarke's stained glass in the back room, which most people sit under without noticing.
With more time: With a late flight, take the DART north to Howth instead. It is half an hour along the coast to a working fishing harbour with a cliff walk above it, and you can be back with hours to spare.
Before you go
Where to stay
South of the river between Trinity and St Stephen's Green is the easy answer, and it puts three of these four days entirely on foot. Prices there are Dublin's real problem: the city is expensive for what you get, and a room that would be mid range in Lisbon is a splurge here.
Two cheaper areas that still work. Smithfield, north of the river and on the Luas, is ten minutes from the centre and has the better pubs. Portobello, along the canal south of the centre, is residential, quiet and a twenty minute walk in. Avoid booking on price alone around the north end of O'Connell Street, which is convenient and grim after dark.
Getting around
On foot, almost entirely. The centre is flat and compact, and the two tram lines and the buses only matter for the gaol, the brewery and the airport. Buy a Leap card at any newsagent if you expect to use them more than twice; paying cash on a Dublin bus requires exact change and gets you a look.
There is no train from the airport, which surprises people every year. Airport coaches run to the centre every ten or fifteen minutes and take about forty, longer in the evening rush. The DART, the coastal train, is the one line worth knowing about: it runs north to Howth and south to Bray along the sea, and both ends are a half day out.
Booking, money and opening times
Two things need booking and both sell out: the Book of Kells slot at Trinity, and the guided tour at Kilmainham Gaol, which is the only way in. Book them the week before, not the morning of. Everything else here you can walk up to.
The Republic uses the euro, and Northern Ireland, ninety minutes up the motorway, uses pounds. Cards work everywhere, including on the smallest pub tab. The national museums are free, which is unusual in Europe and worth knowing when the paid attractions start adding up.
Pubs, and how not to waste them
Temple Bar is four streets of stag parties paying nine euro for a pint, and it is where nearly every visitor ends up on their first night. The pubs Dubliners actually use start about two minutes outside it, in any direction, and cost noticeably less.
What to look for: no television, a snug or a partition, and a sign about music sessions rather than a live band on a stage. Sessions usually start around half nine and are free. If you are not drinking, ask for a glass of blackcurrant and nobody will blink.
Dublin rewards low expectations and punishes a packed schedule. Four days done at this pace leaves several afternoons genuinely open, and those afternoons are where the trip happens: a bookshop, a long lunch, a conversation with a stranger that goes on longer than you planned.
If you have longer, go west. The train to Galway takes two and a half hours from Heuston, and the country on the other side of the Shannon looks nothing like this one.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
- 8 days · 3 cities · via DublinEight days in Wales and Ireland: castles, a mountain railway and the boat across
- 9 days · 3 cities · via DublinNine days in Ireland and Northern Ireland: the border nobody can point at
- 10 days · 3 cities · via DublinTen days in Ireland: the further west you drive, the better it gets
- 16 days · 6 cities · via DublinSixteen days in the British Isles: six cities and one crossing of the Irish Sea
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is four days enough for Dublin?
- Comfortably. The centre is about two kilometres across and the sights that matter are inside it, so four days means two full days of museums and history, an evening on either end, and time left over. A fifth day is better spent out of the city, at Glendalough in the Wicklow mountains or on the coast.
- What has to be booked in advance?
- Kilmainham Gaol, because the guided tour is the only way in and it sells out days ahead. The Book of Kells at Trinity is timed and also worth booking, particularly at weekends. Nothing else on these four days needs a ticket bought before you arrive.
- Is the Guinness Storehouse worth the money?
- It is expensive and it is essentially an advertisement, and it is still the thing most people are glad they did. The bar at the top has a view over the whole city and the pint is included. If you would rather drink than tour, spend the same money on an afternoon in three old pubs.
- Do I need a car?
- No, and it would be a liability. Parking is expensive, the centre is congested, and everything on these four days is walkable or a short bus. Hire a car only if you are leaving Dublin for the west afterwards, and collect it on the day you go.
- When is the best time to go?
- May, June and September, when there is real daylight until late and the rain is at least intermittent. Dublin in December is dark by four but the pubs are at their best. Avoid the week around 17 March unless the parade is the point of the trip, when prices double and the centre stops working.
- Can I change this itinerary?
- Yes. Copy it into a trip of your own, move the days around, drop the brewery, add Howth. The order here is built around the two things that need booking, so if you shift those the rest follows.