Most of what this page lists is not a town in the ordinary sense. It is Dublin city, split into the streets and quarters people actually name when giving directions: Capel Street, Dame Street, College Green, Arran Quay. The majority sit inside the canals, within a half-hour walk of each other, which makes this a page you can work through largely on foot.
The tightest cluster runs along the Liffey and the old Wide Streets Commission grid. Dame Street covers the 300 metres from Trinity’s front gate to City Hall and Dublin Castle; College Green is the parliament square at one end of it, and D’Olier Street was cut deliberately wide for the same reason a few minutes east. Arran Quay faces them from the north bank under the green dome of the Four Courts, with St Michan’s crypt and its mummified bodies close by. Temple Bar fills the cobbled lanes in between, best in daylight, when the Saturday food market is on in Meeting House Square. Capel Street, traffic-free since May 2022, does much the same job on the northside with fewer stag parties.
Beyond the core you need transport. Dún Laoghaire is the run south to a Victorian harbour, two piers and the restored Baths; Ballsbridge and Donnybrook sit on the Dodder with Herbert Park between them; East Wall and Broadstone were shaped by port and railway rather than by a high street.
Cobbled lanes at the centre of the city, best by day for the Saturday food market, trad sessions and free galleries before the tour groups arrive.
A short run of the Liffey's north bank under the Four Courts dome, with St Paul's church and St Michan's mummified crypt minutes away.
The embassy quarter south-east of the core, leafy and low-key, holding the 32 acres of Herbert Park along with the Aviva Stadium and the RDS.
Shaped by canal and railway rather than a high street, with a closed neo-Egyptian terminus, the walled Blessington Street Basin and the King's Inns.
Dublin's longest traffic-free street, 400 metres of independent shops, grocers and trad pubs, at its best on a weekday evening when the terraces fill.
42 of 42 shown — tap a pin for the place.
Temple Bar, dublin
Every Saturday a food market fills Meeting House Square with oysters and farmhouse cheese, a few doors from the red-fronted Temple Bar pub. The rest of the week the cobbled lanes trade on trad sessions, free photography galleries and the arthouse IFI. Come by day; the nights belong to the tour groups.
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Arran Quay is a short run of the Liffey's north bank just west of the Four Courts, whose green dome is the view here. The quay itself is a working road with granite walls from around 1800; the reasons to stop are St Paul's church (where Éamon de Valera married in 1910), the mummified bodies in St Michan's crypt a few minutes away, and a good coffee at Copper + Straw.
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A leafy, affluent suburb on the River Dodder just south-east of Dublin's core, Ballsbridge is named for a bridge the Ball family first built in the 1500s – the current three-arch span dates from 1791. It's the city's embassy quarter, home to the 32-acre Herbert Park, the Aviva Stadium and the RDS.
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Broadstone has no high street; its shape comes from infrastructure – first the Royal Canal, then a neo-Egyptian railway terminus that closed in 1961, now the Luas Green Line. The Blessington Street Basin is a walled park restored in the 1990s, and the King's Inns, Ireland's oldest legal school, faces the old canal harbour. James Joyce lived around the corner.
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Capel Street became Dublin’s longest traffic-free street in May 2022 – a 400-metre run of independent shops, Asian and Brazilian grocers, trad pubs and the city’s best-known gay bar. It’s the northside’s answer to Temple Bar, minus the stag parties. Come on a weekday evening, when the dining terraces fill and the crowds thin.
College Green, dublin
College Green is the old parliament square at the centre of Dublin, framed by the former Houses of Parliament – now the Bank of Ireland – and the front gate of Trinity College. Once a Viking assembly ground, it is still the city's main spot for rallies, buskers and big public gatherings.
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D'Olier Street is a short, deliberately wide street near O'Connell Bridge, laid out by the 18th-century Wide Streets Commission and named after a Huguenot goldsmith. It was the Irish Times's home for over a century, and the D'Olier Chambers corner now holds the Michelin-starred D'Olier Street restaurant.
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Dame Street is the widest avenue the Wide Streets Commission cut through Dublin after 1769, running 300 m from College Green and Trinity College to City Hall and Dublin Castle. Along it sit the Olympia Theatre's cast-iron canopy, an Art Deco department store and the former Central Bank.
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Dawson Street runs parallel to Grafton Street, from St Stephen's Green to Trinity, and trades footfall for substance. It holds the Mansion House - the oldest freestanding house in Dublin and the room where the First Dáil sat in 1919 - along with Hodges Figgis, trading books since 1768, a Michelin-starred restaurant, and the city's smallest pub.
Donnybrook, dublin
Donnybrook gave English the word for a rowdy free-for-all, courtesy of a fair that ran for 650 years. Today it's one of Dublin 4's quieter corners: red-brick avenues, the Dodder walk from Herbert Park, and Leinster Rugby at Donnybrook Stadium.
Dún Laoghaire, dublin
Dún Laoghaire is a Victorian resort built around a vast artificial harbour. Walk the East Pier to its lighthouse, swim at the restored Baths, browse the free National Maritime Museum, and catch a boat to Howth across Dublin Bay.
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Once tidal mudflats, East Wall is one of Dublin's few officially designated villages, a tight-knit inner-city neighbourhood built on land walled off from the Liffey in the 1700s. Walk the Dublin Port Greenway, look in on the award-winning Sean O'Casey Community Centre, and follow the streets that raised the playwright it's named after.
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Dublin's first purpose-built shopping centre opened here in 1881 as the South City Markets. Under its glass roof and cast-iron brackets, more than forty independent traders sell vintage clothes, second-hand books and records, and coffee – a covered short cut off South Great George's Street that has stood since Victorian times.
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George’s Street Arcade opened in 1881 as the South City Market, Ireland’s first purpose-built shopping centre. Behind the red brick and glass roof, more than 40 independent stalls sell vinyl, vintage clothes, second-hand books and coffee. It’s free, covered, and five minutes from Grafton Street – a good stop when the weather turns.
Glencullen, dublin
At 276 metres above sea level, Glencullen is one of the highest villages in Ireland, tucked into the Dublin Mountains near the Wicklow border. It has a Bronze-Age standing stone, the wedge tomb known as the Giant's Grave, world-class downhill trails at The GAP, and Johnnie Fox's – the highest pub in the country.
Dublin city centre, dublin
Grafton Street is Dublin's pedestrianised shopping street, running from St Stephen's Green down to Trinity College. It mixes flagship stores and historic cafés like Bewley's with a tightly regulated busking scene that launched Bono, Glen Hansard and Damien Rice.
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A half-kilometre of near-unbroken Georgian red-brick, Harcourt Street runs from St Stephen’s Green to Harcourt Road. Bram Stoker lived at No. 16, the decision to found Dáil Éireann was taken at No. 6, and by night it turns into one of Dublin’s busiest club strips.
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Laid out in 1614 by Henry Moore, 1st Earl of Drogheda, Henry Street is Dublin's principal northside shopping street, running from the GPO on O'Connell Street to Mary Street. Arnotts has traded here since 1843, and roughly 33 million people pass through each year.
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Running through Dublin’s Liberties, James’s Street connects the medieval Camino pilgrimage route with the modern roar of the Guinness brewery. Explore protected Georgian architecture, a Joyce-mentioned 1790 fountain-obelisk, and two award-winning whiskey distilleries.
Lucan, dublin
Lucan sits on the Liffey 12 km west of Dublin, where a single-span masonry bridge from 1814 crosses the river beside the old village core. St Catherine's Park spreads along the riverbank with woodland loops, a dog park and a summer market, and Patrick Sarsfield – the Jacobite 'Lion of the West' – was born on the manor here.
Malahide, dublin
Malahide's trade was first regulated back in 1375, and the harbour has been busy ever since; today it holds one of Dublin's largest marinas, with more than 300 berths. A flat, fully accessible promenade curves round the basin, and the village behind it has seafood at the marina and pints at Gibney's, going since 1937.
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Marrowbone Lane runs 700 metres off Cork Street in the Liberties, and it carries three separate pasts: the weaving trade that first filled it, a 1916 garrison under Éamonn Ceannt that held out most of a week, and a 1930s Herbert Simms housing scheme that's still lived in. It's a working residential street rather than a sight, so come for the history, not a visitor centre.
Temple Bar, dublin
Meeting House Square is a paved performance space in Temple Bar, best known for its Saturday food market and summer open-air cinema. Framed by four retractable umbrellas and the Irish Film Institute, it's free to enter, but really only worth a special trip when something is on.
Dublin City Centre, dublin
O'Connell Street is Dublin's widest thoroughfare, about 600 m long and 45 m across, running north from O'Connell Bridge to Parnell Street. The GPO at its centre was the headquarters of the 1916 Rising and still carries the bullet marks. The 120 m stainless-steel Spire stands where Nelson's Pillar was blown up in 1966.
North City, dublin
Ormond Quay runs along the north bank of the Liffey, completed by 1680 and named after the Duke of Ormond. Its landmark is 18 Ormond Quay Upper, a modest 1840s merchant house whose restoration by Dublin Civic Trust won a European Heritage Award in 2021 – and the Winding Stair, a bookshop-turned-bistro that took a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2008.
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Dublin's earliest Georgian square began as pleasure gardens laid out in 1750 to fund the Rotunda, the first public maternity hospital in Britain or Ireland. The free Hugh Lane Gallery holds a reconstructed Francis Bacon studio and Impressionist paintings, and the Garden of Remembrance, with its Children of Lir sculpture, honours the dead of Ireland's fight for independence.
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Parnell Street runs a kilometre across Dublin's north inner city, from Capel Street to Mountjoy Square. Its western half holds the Ilac Centre and Ireland's largest cinema; its eastern end is the city's Chinatown and Koreatown, and the better reason to come.
Phibsborough, dublin
Two kilometres north of the Liffey, Phibsborough is a Victorian railway suburb that Time Out twice named one of the world's coolest neighbourhoods. It's a walkable base for the city, with the Royal Canal towpath, Blessington Street Basin and Ireland's oldest football ground at Dalymount Park.
Raheny, dublin
Raheny sits halfway between Dublin city and Howth, with an early ringfort buried under its crossroads and the old Guinness estate at St Anne's Park on its doorstep. From here the coast opens out to Bull Island's 4.5 km strand and bird reserve.
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Sir John Rogerson’s Quay runs along the south bank of the Liffey through Dublin's Docklands, mixing 18th-century quay-building with glass office towers. Its landmark is a 90-ton diving bell that built the port's walls, now raised on a plinth with an exhibition beneath.
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Once Dublin's livestock market, Smithfield is now a compact Northside square of restored cobbles, a whiskey distillery, an arthouse cinema and one of the city's great trad pubs. Time Out named it the world's second-coolest neighbourhood in 2023. It's a ten-minute walk from the centre and easy to do in a day.
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Once the cattle-market district Dubliners called Cowtown, Stoneybatter is now a grid of Victorian terraces, independent cafés and old pubs on the northside, a 10-minute walk from the Liffey. Phoenix Park is at its back door, and the National Museum's decorative arts collection sits in Collins Barracks on its edge.
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The Liberties grew up outside Dublin's walls as a 12th-century free-trading zone, and the layers survive: St Audoen's, Marsh's Library with its caged reading desks, Guinness at St James's Gate and new distilleries reviving the old whiskey 'Golden Triangle'. Meath Street and Francis Street keep the market-street character between the big-ticket sights.
Balrothery, dublin
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Garristown, dublin
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Mountjoy Square, dublin
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