King’s Inns. Henrietta St. In the heart of now run down early Georgian Dublin, King’s Inns, home to legal eagles, created to James Gandon’s 1795 designs, with additions by Francis Johnston.

Malahide Castle. Tel: (01) 845 2655, home of the Talbots from 1185 to 1973. There is an imposing Great Hall with a Minstrel's Gallery. There is an excellent collection of period furniture and an interesting selection of portraits from the National Gallery and associations with James Boswell, Samuel Johnston's biogapher. The castle contains Ireland's largest minature railway. (Admission Charge).

Mountjoy Square. Setting definitely for O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman; setting possibly of where Brian Boru pitched his tent before the Battle of Clontarf.

National Botanic Gardens. Botanic Road, Glasnevin. Tel: (01) 837 7590. Nineteen hectares of flower beds plus splendid curvilinear glasshouses by Richard Turner, creator of like masterpieces in Kew and Belfast. Prospect Cemetery, Ireland’s largest, right next door, has a Round Tower replica and the graves of many of Ireland’s revolutionary politicians.

O’Connell Street. The city’s widest thoroughfare, re-named in 1924 for Daniel ‘The Liberator’ O’Connell whose statue, pock-marked with Civil War bullets, decorates the end nearest O’Connell Bridge. Leader of the 1931 General Strike, Jim Larkin’s statue is outside the GPO. James Joyce’s statue is by Earl St North and a female figure, representing Anna Livia, the author’s ‘spirit of the Liffey’ has been re-named ‘the Floozie in the Jacuzzi’ by irreverent Dubliners. Charles Stewart Parnell’s statue graces the north end of the street.

Phoenix Park. Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, five times that of London’s Hyde Park, Phoenix Park, at 700 plus hectares, is among the world’s largest city parks. It has gardens, lakes, a one time horse racing track, a motor racing track, a cricket pitch, polo grounds, football and hurling pitches, Europe’s second oldest public zoo. Dublin Zoo has a superb setting in Phoenix Park and is one of Europe's outstanding examples with an extensive variety of exhibits. In lovely settings and recently enlarged to double its original size with extended and developed facilities. (Dublin Zoo Tel: (01) 677 1425). Also in Phoenix Park is a herd of deer, the Garda (police) Headquaters and the Irish President’s Residence, Áras an Uachtaráin. Devised by Lord Ormonde in 1671, the park became public in 1747. The obelisk by the Parkgate St entrance commemorates the Duke of Wellington; nearby is the Magazine Fort. In the centre of the park is the Phoenix Monument, though the park’s original name comes not from the mythical bird but from the gaelic fionn uisce, clear water