It was only ever meant to be temporary. The Papal Cross went up in Phoenix Park for Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979 – a 35-metre (116 ft) cross of steel girders, put up to give the pope something to stand beneath while he said Mass. On the day, 29 September 1979, around 1.25 million people, roughly a third of the entire country, filled the park to hear him. Then the crowds went home, and the cross, which was supposed to come down, stayed up.
A cross that was never taken down
The steelwork was raised on 14 September 1979, a fortnight before the pope arrived, after several attempts. It was designed by Scott Tallon Walker Architects and built by John Sisk & Sons. That it is still standing is largely down to Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who intervened to keep it, with Dublin Corporation formally approving its retention in 1981.
The cross came back to the world’s screens on 26 August 2018, when Pope Francis said Mass at the same spot. This time the crowd was around 130,000, against 1.25 million in 1979 – a plain measure of how much the Catholic Church’s place in Irish life had changed in four decades.
What to see
Up close, it is honestly just a very large cross: a plain Latin cross with a single crossbar, despite the three-barred ‘papal cross’ it is named after. Its power is in the setting and the scale – a stark white line against the sky above an open meadow, best seen at sunrise or sunset. On a clear day the high ground gives you the Dublin skyline to the east and the mountains to the south.
The meadow around it is one of the better places in the park to see the wild fallow deer that have roamed Phoenix Park since it was laid out as a royal hunting park in the 1660s. Keep your distance, do not feed them, and do not approach – they are wild, and they will bolt.
Getting there
The cross stands in the middle of Phoenix Park, open 24 hours a day, all year, with no admission fee. It is an open monument: no ticket office, no staff.
- By car: there is a car park right beside the cross, one of the bigger ones in the park. It rarely fills, though weekend afternoons in summer get busy.
- By public transport: Dublin Bus routes serve the park, and Heuston Station is a short walk from the Parkgate Street entrance, the most direct way in to the central meadow. Since 2023 the Route 99 shuttle also runs from Parkgate Street to the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, stopping near the cross.
- Facilities: there are none at the cross itself. For toilets, a café and the historical film, head to the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre by Ashtown Castle.
- Accessibility: the paved paths to the cross are level and fine for wheelchairs and prams; the meadow itself is grass.
Do not make a special trip for the cross alone – there is not much to it once you have stood underneath and taken the photo. Fold it into a longer walk instead: the Wellington Monument, the People’s Gardens, or a coffee at the visitor centre. Go near sunset, when the white steel catches the last of the light, and it is worth the ten minutes.