Ireland Guide
Dublin
Trinity College
Address: St Stephen's Green
Website: www.tcd.ie
Price: Free
An imposing and surprisingly extensive architectural set-piece right at the heart of the city, Trinity College was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. Inside the imposing main gates, eighteenth-century Front Square is flanked, with appealing symmetry, by the Chapel and the Examination Hall, which is the elegant, stuccoed setting for occasional concerts. On the east side of adjoining Library Square is the college's oldest surviving building, the Rubrics, a red-brick student dormitory dating from around 1701, though much altered in the nineteenth century. In New Square beyond, the School of Engineering occupies the old Museum Building (1852), designed in extravagant Venetian Gothic style by Benjamin Woodward under the influence of his friend, John Ruskin, and awash with decorative stone-carving of animals and floral patterns. The major attractions are the Douglas Hyde Gallery, and of course The Book of Kells, housed in the Old Library.