Explore Malahide

Malahide Castle stands in a parkland estate of about 100 hectares north of Dublin; its oldest parts date from the 12th century, and the Talbot family lived here from 1185 until 1976, apart from the years 1649 to 1660. Guided tours show the furnished rooms and the Great Hall, and the grounds hold walled gardens, a butterfly house and a fairy trail.

Newbridge House is a Georgian country house at Donabate, north of Dublin, built from around 1751 for the family of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin; the Cobbes owned it until Dublin County Council acquired it in 1985. Guided tours cover the house and its Red Drawing Room, and the 400-acre parkland includes a farm with traditional breeds.

The Jeanie Johnston is a replica of a three-masted barque built in Quebec in 1847, completed in 2002 at Blennerville in County Kerry and moored at Custom House Quay. The original made 16 voyages to North America between 1848 and 1855, carrying emigrants from Tralee during the Great Famine. Guided tours below deck show how passengers lived on board.

EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum occupies the vaults of the CHQ Building, a former warehouse of 1820 on Custom House Quay in the Docklands. Opened in 2016, its galleries use interactive and audio-visual displays to tell why millions of people left Ireland and what the Irish diaspora went on to do around the world.

The Custom House is a neoclassical building on the north quay of the Liffey, designed by James Gandon and opened in 1791 to collect customs duties. The IRA burned it out in 1921 and it was later restored; it now houses a government department. A visitor centre tells its history and shows Edward Smyth's carved heads of Ireland's rivers.

Windmill Lane Recording Studios is a working recording studio on Ringsend Road. Founded in 1978 on Windmill Lane, it moved in 1990 into the former tramway power station here. U2, the Rolling Stones, Kate Bush and Ed Sheeran have recorded in its rooms. A guided tour of about an hour shows the studios and lets visitors mix a track.

The GPO Museum occupies part of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, a building by Francis Johnston that opened in 1818 and served as the rebels' headquarters in the 1916 Easter Rising. Opened in 2016 for the centenary, it tells the story of the Rising and of modern Irish history with artefacts, a film and interactive displays.

The National Wax Museum Plus is a waxworks in the Victorian Lafayette Building on Westmoreland Street, near O'Connell Bridge. It first opened in 1983 on Granby Row, moved to the Armoury on Foster Place and came here in 2017. Its rooms show wax figures of Irish historical figures, writers and musicians, Irish legends and film characters.

The Book of Kells Experience at Trinity College Dublin shows the 9th-century illuminated gospel book in the Old Library, built in the 18th century, together with the Long Room and its oak bookcases. A second building, the Red Pavilion, holds digital exhibitions on the manuscript and the library's collections.

Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592 by royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I and is Ireland's oldest university. Its walled campus in the city centre is laid out around cobbled squares such as Parliament Square, Front Square with its campanile, and Library Square, lined by Georgian and Victorian buildings.

The Ha'penny Bridge is a cast-iron footbridge over the River Liffey, opened in 1816 to replace a ferry service. Its ribs were cast in Shropshire by the Coalbrookdale Company, and until 1919 everyone crossing paid a halfpenny toll at turnstiles. Its official name is the Liffey Bridge; it was restored and repainted white in 2001.

The Irish Whiskey Museum opened in 2014 in an old building on Grafton Street, at College Green opposite the front gate of Trinity College. It is not tied to any distillery and tells the history of Irish whiskey and its part in Ireland's past. Visits are guided tours through historic exhibits that end with a tasting.

The National Gallery of Ireland holds the national collection of Irish and European art. Founded in 1854, it opened in 1864 in a building by Francis Fowke on Merrion Square West, later extended with the Milltown, Beit and Millennium wings. The collection spans Irish painting, Italian Baroque art and Dutch masters, from Vermeer to Jack B. Yeats.

Merrion Square is a Georgian garden square laid out from 1762 for the Fitzwilliam estate, lined on three sides by red-brick townhouses with coloured doors and fanlights. Oscar Wilde grew up at No. 1 and W. B. Yeats lived at No. 82. The railed central garden is a public park, with a statue of Wilde reclining on a rock opposite his childhood home.

The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology on Kildare Street opened in 1890 in a Palladian building by Thomas Newenham Deane and his son Thomas Manly Deane, entered through a domed rotunda. It shows Irish antiquities from the Stone Age to the late Middle Ages, including bog bodies, prehistoric gold, Viking finds and medieval church metalwork.

Jameson Distillery Bow St. stands on the site of the Bow Street Distillery off Smithfield Square, founded in 1780 and run by John Jameson from 1805. Jameson whiskey was distilled here until 1971; the old buildings now hold a visitor centre where guided tours explain how the whiskey was made and end with a tutored tasting.

Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals, founded in the early 11th century under the Norse king Sitric Silkenbeard and rebuilt in stone from the 1180s under Strongbow. A restoration in the 1870s gave it its tower, flying buttresses and covered bridge. Its large crypt dates from the 12th century.

St Stephen's Green is a Victorian park of about nine hectares at the top of Grafton Street, laid out by William Sheppard and reopened to the public by Lord Ardilaun in 1880. Paths lead past a lake with ducks and swans, a bandstand, flowerbeds around fountains, a garden for the blind and memorials such as the Fusiliers' Arch.

St Patrick's Cathedral is the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland, built in the 13th century beside the well where Saint Patrick is said to have baptised converts. It is the largest church in Ireland. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, was its dean from 1713 and is buried in the nave.

Dublin Zoo covers about 28 hectares of Phoenix Park. Laid out to a design by Decimus Burton, it opened in 1831 and is one of the oldest zoos in the world. Around 400 animals of some 100 species live in habitats such as the African Savanna, the Kaziranga Forest Trail, the Gorilla Rainforest and Sea Lion Cove.