The oldest of the Georgian squares
Parnell Square is the earliest of Dublin’s Georgian squares, and the only one on the north side to escape the tenement decay that hollowed out the rest in the 19th century. It began as a money-making scheme. In 1750 Dr Bartholomew Mosse laid out pleasure gardens on the site and used the subscriptions of their wealthy patrons to build the Rotunda, the first public maternity hospital in Britain or Ireland, in 1757. The terraces grew up around those gardens and were finished by 1785. Dig beneath the square and the history runs deeper still: earlier excavations turned up burials thought to date from the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.
If you only have an hour here, spend it in the Hugh Lane Gallery. Everything else is worth a look on the walk between, but the Hugh Lane is the reason to make the trip.
The buildings
The square was called Rutland Square until 3 April 1933, when it was renamed for the nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell – a motion first raised back in 1911. The centrepiece is Charlemont House (1765), designed by William Chambers as the grand front of a planned ‘palace’ terrace; it now holds the Hugh Lane. Next door at No. 11 (built 1755) are the Irish Heritage Trust, Poetry Ireland and the Seamus Heaney Poetry Library.
The plainer doors carry the heavier history. At No. 25 the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood met on 9 September 1914 and resolved to rise against British rule before the war was over; the building later housed the Gaelic League. No. 44 was Sinn Féin’s headquarters, and No. 5 is the birthplace of Oliver St John Gogarty, the model for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. No. 9 Cavendish Row was Mosse’s own home. There are marker plaques along the terraces if you want to read the doors as you pass.
The Hugh Lane Gallery
Dublin’s municipal gallery of modern art fills Charlemont House, and the permanent collection – Irish painters alongside a strong run of French Impressionists – is free. The pull for many is the Francis Bacon studio: the artist’s chaotic South Kensington workroom, dismantled and rebuilt here piece by piece, dust and all. The permanent rooms cost nothing; temporary exhibitions and the Bacon studio may carry a small charge. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm and Sunday 11am–4pm, closed Monday – so a Monday visit means the square and the garden but not the art.
The Garden of Remembrance
At the north end, the sunken Garden of Remembrance is dedicated to those who died in the cause of Irish freedom. Oisín Kelly’s Children of Lir rises from the pool at its head, and a stone wall carries a poem in Irish and English. Entry is free and it closes at dusk. It is a quieter, more deliberate space than the traffic on the square would lead you to expect – worth ten minutes even if you skip everything else.
Round the corner, the Dublin Writers Museum and the Irish Writers’ Centre sit on the north side, and the Gate Theatre occupies the south-east corner beside the Ambassador and the Pillar Room.
Getting there and eating nearby
The square is at the top of O’Connell Street, so the LUAS Red Line at O’Connell Street leaves you a two-minute walk away and the Aircoach 700 runs in from the airport. Dublin Bus routes 46A, 123 and 145 stop nearby. Street parking is scarce; the Rotunda Hospital car park on Parnell Street is the closest reliable option.
For food, Chapter One on the north side is the Michelin name, but the easier win is Parnell Street itself, just south of the square – Dublin’s de facto China quarter, thick with Chinese and other Asian restaurants. One honest caveat: some visitors find the immediate area uneasy after dark, so stick to the main streets at night.
Dublin City Council has plans to pedestrianise the north side into a cultural district, move the city library into the former Coláiste Mhuire buildings, add a new auditorium and open the Rotunda’s gardens to the public. Until then, come on a weekday morning when the Hugh Lane opens, do the gallery first, then walk the terraces down to the Garden of Remembrance before the light goes.