Hike the path from the Montpelier Hill car park to the summit, about 45 minutes on rough ground, with Dublin Bay opening up behind you

Inside the lodge, find the fireplace lintel — a standing stone robbed from the Neolithic tomb that topped this hill

Find the north gable window in the story Thomas Conolly told: a stranger at the card table, cloven hooves under it, and the man going out through the glass in flames

Stand at the summit and read Swift's verdict on the club — "a brace of monsters, blasphemers and Bacchanalians"

At the summit of Montpelier Hill, Speaker William Conolly built a hunting lodge in 1725 robbing stone from the Neolithic passage tomb that topped the hill — a nearby standing stone became the fireplace lintel. Shortly after it was finished a storm took the slate roof off, and Conolly replaced it with an arched stone roof, built like a bridge, which is still there. The lodge was later let to the Irish Hellfire Club, founded around 1737 by Richard Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse, and the painter James Worsdale, whose members styled themselves satanists and whose reputation was so foul that Jonathan Swift called them "a brace of monsters, blasphemers and Bacchanalians."

Hellfire Club: The King of Hell's Lodge

Mountain bike the waymarked 15km Ticknock trail network, with views over Dublin City and Bay to the Wicklow Mountains

Ride the trails at Glencullen Adventure Park (The GAP), 20 minutes from Dublin city centre

Find the Ballyedmonduff Wedge Tomb, a Bronze Age burial site tucked into the forest near Ticknock

Compare Ticknock's purpose-built singletrack with Glencullen's more natural, technical trails

Dublin has purpose-built singletrack twenty minutes from the city centre. Ticknock carries a waymarked 15km network with the whole city, the bay and the Wicklow Mountains laid out below you on the descents. Glencullen Adventure Park, over the shoulder, is a paid downhill bike park with an uplift — steep and gravity-fed where Ticknock is flowing, and worth riding on the same trip to feel the difference. Tucked into the forest near Ticknock is the Ballyedmonduff Wedge Tomb, a Bronze Age burial that was on this hillside four thousand years before the trails were cut.

Ticknock and Glencullen: Mountain Biking Above Dublin

Find Cooldrinagh on Kerrymount Avenue, Foxrock — the house Beckett's family built in 1903, where he was born in the main bedroom in 1906

Tour Trinity College Dublin, where Beckett studied French and Italian before becoming a lecturer there himself

Cross the Samuel Beckett Bridge, Santiago Calatrava's harp-shaped structure over the Liffey, opened in 2009

Note that Beckett's plays are still regularly staged around Dublin — check the Gate and Abbey Theatre listings for what's on

Samuel Beckett was born in 1906 in the main bedroom of Cooldrinagh, the house his family built on Kerrymount Avenue in Foxrock three years earlier, and it is still a private house on a suburban road. He read French and Italian at Trinity and came back to lecture there before leaving for Paris and writing the work that took theatre apart. The bridge named after him is Santiago Calatrava's, opened in 2009 and shaped like a harp laid on its side across the Liffey.

Beckett's Dublin: Cooldrinagh, Trinity and the Bridge

Find 33 Synge Street, George Bernard Shaw's birthplace — the museum inside has been closed, but the Victorian terrace house is still there

See the bronze Shaw by Paolo Troubetzkoy in the grounds of the National Gallery, which he left a third of his royalties, sculpted by Paolo Troubetzkoy and placed there after Shaw left a third of his royalties to the gallery

Compare Shaw's tenement-era Dublin, which shaped his social commentary plays like Pygmalion, with the grandeur of the National Gallery he cherished as a boy

Shaw is revived from time to time in Dublin — check the Abbey and Gate listings — check listings for what's showing

George Bernard Shaw was born in a Victorian terrace at 33 Synge Street in 1856 and grew up in a Dublin of tenements and genteel poverty — the material that produced Pygmalion. The house is still there, though the museum inside it has closed. What he said gave him his real education was the National Gallery, where he went as a boy; he left it a third of his royalties in his will, and the bronze of him by Paolo Troubetzkoy stands at the Clare Street entrance because of it. His plays are still in repertory at the Abbey and the Gate.

Shaw's Dublin: Birthplace and the National Gallery

Tour Teeling Distillery in the Liberties, the first new whiskey distillery to open in Dublin in over 125 years when it opened in 2015

Visit the Irish Whiskey Museum on Grafton Street for a guided tasting through Irish whiskey's history

Tour Roe & Co Distillery on James's Street, built inside the old Guinness power station

Compare a pot-still Teeling whiskey with a Roe & Co blend, made a few streets apart in the same historic distilling district

The Liberties once held the largest distillery in the world, and Dublin at its peak had dozens of them, and then Dublin distilling collapsed so completely that when Teeling opened in 2015 it was the first new distillery in the city in over 125 years. Roe & Co is built inside the old Guinness power station on James's Street, a few streets away. Between the two, the Irish Whiskey Museum on Grafton Street walks you through how an industry that size disappeared and how it came back. Taste a pot still against a blend, made within a few streets of each other, and you can tell them apart.

Dublin's Three Distilleries: Teeling, Roe & Co and the Whiskey Museum

Take the guided tour of Kilmainham Gaol, opened in 1796 as the New Gaol

Stand in the prison yard where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were shot

Find out why the first republicans executed by the Free State in the Civil War were shot in the same yard

See the gaol chapel, the last part of the building to be restored, re-opened in 1971

Go east to the GPO on O'Connell Street, headquarters of the Rising, and its GPO Witness History centre

Kilmainham Gaol opened in 1796 as the New Gaol, built to replace a dungeon a few hundred metres away and officially called the County of Dublin Gaol. Nearly every generation of Irish rebellion passed through it: Robert Emmet and Anne Devlin in 1803, Parnell and most of his parliamentary colleagues in 1881–82, and in 1916 the leaders of the Easter Rising, who were shot in the prison yard. The first four republicans executed by the Free State during the Civil War were shot in the same yard. The gaol was decommissioned in 1924, left to rot and nearly demolished, until a volunteer society formed in 1958 and sixty volunteers began clearing it in May 1960; it opened to the public on 10 April 1966, and the chapel, the last piece, re-opened in 1971. The courthouse next door became its visitor centre in 2015. Three kilometres east, the GPO on O'Connell Street was the headquarters of the Rising, where Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation on 24 April 1916.

Kilmainham Gaol: The Yard Where 1916 Ended

Climb the seven floors around the atrium shaped like a pint

Learn to pour your own pint properly, with the two-part pour and the settle

Drink the pint in the Gravity Bar with the city laid out below

Find the 9,000-year lease Arthur Guinness signed in 1759, at £45 a year

The Storehouse opened at St James's Gate on 2 December 2000 and has taken over twenty million people through it since. The building is the joke: seven floors wrapped around a glass atrium built in the shape of a pint of Guinness, so you are climbing up through the inside of the drink. The seventh floor is the Gravity Bar, with Dublin laid out on every side and the pint itself included in the price of most tickets. It is the most visited paid attraction in the country and it earns it.

The Guinness Storehouse: Seven Floors Inside a Pint

On Cook Street, pass through St Audoen's Arch, the only surviving gate of Dublin's medieval walls, and climb the steps from it to the church above

In Christ Church, find the heart of St Laurence O'Toole in the Chapel of St Laud — stolen in 2012, found in the Phoenix Park in 2018 and back in its heart-shaped box

Cross Street's covered stone bridge of the 1870s into Dublinia and walk through the reconstructed Viking longhouse

In Dublinia's excavation display, find the skull with the healed sword cut across the crown — a Viking-age man who survived a blade wound to the skull; the healed bone shows he lived for years afterward

Cook Street holds the only surviving gate of Dublin's medieval city walls — St Audoen's Arch, built in the 13th century. A three-minute walk uphill reaches Christ Church Cathedral, where the mummified heart of St. Laurence O'Toole, patron saint of Dublin, sits in a heart-shaped reliquary in the Chapel of St. Laud — stolen in 2012, found in the Phoenix Park in 2018 and handed back to the cathedral that April. Dublinia's Viking and medieval heritage centre connects directly to the Cathedral by a covered bridge.

Dublin's Medieval Mile: Gate, Cathedral and the Viking City

In Kildare Market Square, find the perpetual flame tended by the Brigidine Sisters — relit on 1 February 1993, after Archbishop de Loundres had it put out in 1220

At St Brigid's Cathedral, look at the medieval Round Tower beside it and its doorway set 3.5 metres above the ground

At St Brigid's Well in Tully, walk the circuit three times sunwise and leave a ribbon or a coin at the stone basin, the way pilgrims do

Walk out to the edge of the Curragh — nearly 5,000 acres of grassland never ploughed in recorded history — and look back at the Round Tower on the skyline

Tradition has St Brigid founding her monastery at Kildare around 480 AD, and with it the perpetual fire — said to be older than Christianity here — which Archbishop de Loundres ordered put out in 1220 as superstitious. The Brigidine Sisters relit it on 1 February 1993 and it has burned since. Three distinct monuments to Brigid survive in Kildare: the flame in Market Square, the medieval Round Tower, and the holy well 2km from town.