Ireland's most visited paid attraction, in a seven-storey atrium shaped like a pint glass, ending in a glass bar with a view over the whole city.
What it is
Not the brewery — the working brewery is next door and is closed to the public. This is a seven-storey former fermentation plant converted in 2000 into a self-guided exhibition, built around an atrium in the shape of a pint glass. If it were filled it would hold 14.3 million pints, which the building tells you within about ninety seconds.
Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on the four-acre site in 1759 at £45 a year. The company has long since bought the freehold, which spoils the story slightly.
The visit
Ground floor: ingredients, water, barley, hops, yeast. Then brewing, cooperage, transport — the barges that took barrels down the Liffey, the company’s own railway and ships.
The advertising floor is the best part of the exhibition and the least expected. The toucans, the sea lion, the “Guinness for Strength” man with the girder, John Gilroy’s originals from the 1930s onward. It is a serious collection of twentieth-century commercial art.
The tasting rooms teach you to drink it, which sounds patronising and is mildly interesting.
Guinness Academy on the fourth floor teaches you to pour the two-part pour with the 119.5-second settle, and you get a certificate. Children get a soft drink version.
The Gravity Bar on the seventh floor is a glass drum with a 360-degree view over Dublin to the mountains, and a pint included in the ticket. It is the reason most people are glad they came.
Is it worth it
It is the most visited paid attraction in Ireland and it is also the most expensive thing on a typical Dublin itinerary, and both facts are worth weighing.
Yes if you have any interest in the brand, the advertising, the industrial history, or the view — the Gravity Bar genuinely is the best free-standing view of the city.
No if what you want is to drink good Guinness, because a pub will do that better and for a fifth of the price, and the pint at the top is not meaningfully better than one pulled properly in Kavanagh’s or the Long Hall.
Practical
Book online in advance, and take an early slot. The price is dynamic and rises through the day and through the week.
The walk out through the Liberties is part of it — this is the oldest and most changed part of Dublin, and the distilleries and the markets are on the way.
The alternative
The Roe & Co, Teeling and Pearse Lyons distilleries are all within twenty minutes on foot, all considerably cheaper, and all give you a smaller group and a person rather than a screen.
