A million and a half people buried in 124 acres, including most of the names in modern Irish history, and a guided tour that is one of the best things in the city.
Why it exists
Until 1832 there was no Catholic cemetery in Dublin, and Catholics were buried in Protestant graveyards under restrictions on their own funeral rites. Daniel O’Connell campaigned for and founded this one, and deliberately opened it to people of all religions and none — which it remains.
That founding principle is the thing to hold onto walking round it: it was built as a rebuke to sectarian burial and it has kept its side of the bargain for nearly two centuries.
Around 1.5 million people are buried here, which is more than the current population of Dublin.
Who is in it
More or less everyone. Daniel O’Connell under a 51-metre round tower, the tallest in Ireland, which was bombed in 1971 and reopened to climbers in 2018. Charles Stewart Parnell under a plain granite boulder from Wicklow with only his name on it. Michael Collins, whose grave has fresh flowers on it every single day, left by strangers.
Éamon de Valera, who was on the other side of the Civil War from Collins and lies a short walk away. Roger Casement, Constance Markievicz, Maud Gonne, Brendan Behan, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners, Christy Brown.
The Republican Plot, the Angels Plot for infants, and — the part that lands hardest — the mass graves from the 1847 Famine years and the cholera epidemics, where the burial registers record numbers rather than names.
The tour
Ninety minutes to two hours, several times a day, and it is the reason to come rather than an add-on. The guides tell the history of independent Ireland through its arguments as much as its heroes, and they are unusually good at not resolving them for you.
There is a shorter O’Connell Tower tour that includes the climb, with a view over the whole north city.
The watchtowers
Five stone towers around the walls, built in the 1830s against body snatchers, who supplied the anatomy schools. The cemetery also kept bloodhounds patrolling at night. The towers are still standing at the corners.
Practical
The museum at the entrance is included with a tour ticket and has a genealogy service — the burial records go back to 1828 and are digitised, and a great many visitors with Irish ancestry find people.
The Botanic Gardens share a wall, with a gate between them, and are free. Doing both in one afternoon is the standard move and the contrast is remarkable.
John Kavanagh’s, universally called the Gravediggers, is a pub at the cemetery wall dating from 1833. It does not have a television and it does not do food beyond a toasted sandwich, and it is one of the best pubs in Ireland.
More History
Kilmainham Gaol
The prison where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed, and where a great deal of modern Ireland was decided. Guided tour only, and it books out weeks ahead.
St Patrick's Cathedral
The largest church in Ireland, built where Patrick is said to have baptised converts, with Jonathan Swift buried in the floor and his epitaph on the wall.
Christ Church Cathedral
Founded by a Viking king around 1030, with the largest crypt in Ireland or Britain underneath it — and, in a glass case down there, a mummified cat and rat.