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

The Liberties and the markets

Dublin

Two nights west of the city for the distilleries, the markets and the Guinness Storehouse, then one on the coast at Portrane for the old pubs and the new kitchens.

Dublin on a Plate: Markets, Distilleries and the Old Pubs

Viking and Medieval Dublin

A loop from the ferry: Viking Dublin, the Boyne tombs, medieval Kilkenny, the Rock of Cashel, the Copper Coast, the Hook and Glendalough.

Ireland's Ancient East: A Fortnight From Dublin Port

Order a pint at The Brazen Head's original curved bar on Lower Bridge Street

Find the framed material inside connecting the pub to the United Irishmen's 1803 rebellion planning

Ask the bar staff about the Robert Emmet Room that stood here until the late 1960s

Walk the five minutes uphill from the pub to Christ Church Cathedral and back, the route Dublin's medieval quays would have followed

The Brazen Head claims a licence going back to 1198, which is why it calls itself Dublin's oldest pub; the building you drink in is a coaching inn of 1754, on a site with a merchant's house from at least 1613 and a licence to sell ale from 1661. The pub's own story has Robert Emmet and the United Irishmen meeting here before the 1803 rebellion, and Jonathan Swift and Brendan Behan at its bar.

The Brazen Head: The Pub That Claims 1198

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

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 the vaults and hear how the dry limestone preserved the dead for centuries

Find the coffins of the Sheares brothers, hanged after the 1798 rebellion

In the church above, see the organ case of the 1720s that Handel is said to have played on before the première of Messiah in Dublin in 1742 — the instrument inside it is a later one

Find out what the fire of June 2024 destroyed, and what vandals took in 1996 and 2019

St Michan's on Church Street stands on the site of a Norse chapel of 1095 — for centuries the only parish church on Dublin's north side — and the building you see dates from 1686. Its dry limestone vaults preserved bodies for hundreds of years, and the crypts have had a hard history: vandals wrecked a vault in 1996, an intruder stole two heads in 2019, and a fire set in the crypt in June 2024 destroyed five of the mummies, among them the one known as the Crusader. The Sheares brothers, executed after the 1798 rebellion, lie here too, and the organ in the church above is the one Handel is said to have played before the first performance of Messiah in Dublin in 1742.

St Michan's: The Church, the Crypts and Handel's Organ

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

Browse the Temple Bar food market at the weekend — check the day and the square before you go

Sample artisan food stalls at George's Street Arcade, a Victorian indoor market that opened in 1881 as the South City Markets

Try fish and chips at Leo Burdock on Werburgh Street, Dublin's oldest chipper, serving since 1913

Look for black pudding and other Irish specialities at the food stalls inside George's Street Arcade

George's Street Arcade opened in 1881 as the South City Markets, burned down in 1892 and was rebuilt in the same style two years later — and it is still trading under its red-brick arches with food stalls among the shops. On Saturdays the Temple Bar Food Market fills Meeting House Square with producers. And Leo Burdock on Werburgh Street has been frying since 1913 and is the oldest chipper in the city, with nowhere to sit, which is how it is supposed to be eaten.

Dublin Markets: George's Street Arcade and Leo Burdock

Climb Slieve Gullion to the summit at 573m, the highest point in Armagh

Go inside the summit passage grave, the highest surviving one in Ireland

Find the small lake on the summit beside the cairns

Trace the circle of the Ring of Gullion ring dyke from the top

Slieve Gullion is a steep, flat-topped mountain of 573m, the highest point in Armagh, and it sits at the centre of a ring dyke — the Ring of Gullion, a circle of low hills formed by a collapsed volcanic structure and now an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. On the summit are a small lake and two ancient burial cairns, one of which is the highest surviving passage grave in Ireland. You can walk into it. The mountain is bound up with Cúchulainn in the Ulster Cycle, and the whole ring is visible from the top.

Slieve Gullion: The Highest Surviving Passage Grave in Ireland

Swim from the Guillamene steps into Tramore Bay

Find the old men-only sign above the cove, a rule that lasted until the early 1980s

Swim at the Newtown Cove steps just along the same stretch of coast

Come back in winter and do it again when the water is at its coldest

The Newtown and Guillamene swimming coves sit off Cliff Road at the base of Newtown Head, cut into the rock with concrete steps, iron railings and diving boards bolted to the cliff. Until the early 1980s the Guillamene was men-only, and the old sign is still there. Irish cold-water swimming is not a wellness trend on this coast; it is an unbroken daily habit that runs straight through the winter, and this is one of the places it never stopped.