A cast-iron footbridge from 1816 that charged a halfpenny to cross for a century. Free now, and the most photographed object in the city.
The toll
Before 1816 the crossing here was a ferry, run under licence by a man named William Walsh. The ferries were in poor condition, and Walsh was given a choice: repair them, or build a bridge and charge a toll for a hundred years.
He built the bridge. The toll was a halfpenny, matching the ferry fare, and it was collected at turnstiles at either end until 1919. The official name has been the Liffey Bridge and, briefly, Wellington Bridge; nobody has ever called it either.
It was the first iron bridge in Ireland, cast in Shropshire, and for over a century it was the only pedestrian crossing of the Liffey in the city centre.
Looking at it
It is small — about 43 metres — and it is elegant in a way that is hard to photograph well from close up. The single arch, the three lamps on the parapet and the white paint against the dark water are the whole composition, and they need a bit of distance.
From the north quay boardwalk, looking east or west depending on where the light is.
From Merchants Arch on the south side, which frames it under the archway into Temple Bar.
After dark it is lit, and the reflection in the Liffey does most of the work.
There was a fashion for attaching padlocks to it, which added enough weight to be a genuine structural concern; the council removes them.
The other bridges
Dublin’s Liffey bridges are worth a walk in their own right — the city has around twenty.
O’Connell Bridge is wider than it is long, which is the fact everyone repeats.
The Samuel Beckett Bridge downstream is Calatrava’s, shaped like a harp on its side, and it rotates.
The Sean O’Casey Bridge is a swing bridge that opens for river traffic.
Grattan Bridge has extraordinary seahorse lamp standards nobody looks at.
Practical
It is a thoroughfare, not an attraction, and at nine in the morning it is full of people going to work. It is narrow, and standing in the middle of it to photograph it is the local equivalent of stopping dead on an escalator.
More Landmarks
Trinity College and the Book of Kells
A walled university in the middle of the city, founded in 1592, with a ninth-century illuminated gospel book and a library that looks the way libraries are supposed to look.
Dublin Castle
Seven hundred years of English rule administered from one courtyard, and almost none of it looks like a castle. The Viking foundations underneath are the best part.