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Dublin Ireland Things to Do: A Local's Walking Route Through the Best of the City

Ask ten people for their list of Dublin Ireland things to do and you'll get ten different answers, but a few landmarks show up on every single one.


The good news is that most of them sit within walking distance of each other, tucked along the River Liffey and radiating out from Grafton Street and Temple Bar.


Rather than bouncing around with a map, here's how to string the best Dublin Ireland things to do into one satisfying walk, from a livestream art installation to a thousand-year-old cathedral.



TAKE A SELF-GUIDED TOUR OF DUBLIN


Want the stories playing automatically as you walk this exact route?


Take our Dublin City Walking Tour. It's a self-guided, location-aware audio tour that starts at the Dublin Portal on North Earl Street.


Along the way, you'll discover:

  • The real-time art installation connecting Dublin to New York City

  • The folklore behind Dublin's most famous statue

  • Why Dublin Castle marks a turning point in Irish history


Stories play automatically as you walk, so there's no group and no schedule to worry about, ending near Dublin Castle and City Hall.




START AT THE DUBLIN PORTAL


Few Dublin Ireland things to do are as unusual as the Dublin Portal, a real-time livestream sculpture on O'Connell Street connecting Dublin to a matching installation near New York City's Flatiron Building.


Launched in 2024, it's a strange, funny, occasionally chaotic way to say hello to strangers three thousand miles away before you've even properly started your day in the city.


CROSS THE LIFFEY TOWARD TRINITY COLLEGE


From the Portal, the walk naturally leads toward O'Connell Bridge and across the Liffey to Trinity College Dublin, Ireland's oldest university.


The grounds are free to wander, and the campus statues of alumni like Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith offer an easy history lesson before you continue toward Grafton Street and the Molly Malone Statue, one of the most photographed spots in the city.


WANDER TEMPLE BAR WITHOUT THE TOURIST TRAP FEELING


Temple Bar gets a reputation as a tourist trap, but walking through it with context changes things. The Temple Bar Pub itself has real history behind its colorful facade, and the surrounding streets hold small museums, live music venues, and some genuinely excellent restaurants tucked between the crowds.



CROSS BACK FOR DUBLIN'S OLDEST LANDMARKS


The second half of the walk crosses back over the Liffey toward Dublin's oldest landmarks. The Brazen Head claims the title of Dublin's oldest pub, with a history tangled up in Ireland's fight for independence, while Christ Church Cathedral offers a thousand years of history, a medieval crypt, and a genuinely surprising exhibit: a mummified cat and rat found in the cathedral's organ pipes.


FINISH AT DUBLIN CASTLE


The walk wraps up at Dublin Castle, the site where power formally passed from British rule to the Irish Free State in 1922. It's a fitting endpoint, not just geographically but symbolically, closing out a route that touches nearly every era of Dublin's long history in a single afternoon.


PLAN YOUR TRIP


Ready to turn this walk into a full trip?


Check out our Dublin travel guide for tips on where to eat, where to stay, and how to plan the perfect day (or two) in the city.


 
 
 

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