Four of the fourteen picks here need booking before you leave the house: the Book of Kells at Trinity, the Guinness Storehouse at St James’s Gate, Jameson on Bow Street, and Kilmainham Gaol, where the one-hour guided tour is the only way in at all. Turn up at the gaol gate without a slot and you will be turned away, rain or no rain.
The list clusters tightly in the medieval and Georgian core. St Audoen’s on Cornmarket, Christ Church, St Patrick’s, Parliament House on College Green and Trinity’s Long Room are all within a short walk of each other, so a soaking day can be spent moving between them without ever getting properly wet. Three of those cost nothing — St Audoen’s, Parliament House, and the National Gallery over on Merrion Square, where the Caravaggio hangs. The National Museum’s Treasury, with the Tara Brooch and the bog bodies, is free as well.
The rest are a DART or a bus ride out. Malahide Castle and Dalkey are both coastal and only partly indoors, which matters when it is lashing — the Talbot gardens and Dalkey Island are off the table. Skerries Mills, up the north coast, is the same story. Dublin Zoo in Phoenix Park has enough indoor houses to survive a shower, less so a full day of it.
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14 of 14 shown — tap a pin for the place.
