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Many of the most important sights in the city, such as Custom House, were built during the Georgian era. Artists and musicians visited Dublin from all over Europe – one of the highlights was the premiere of Handel’s oratorio, The Messiah , in Dublin in 1741.

Considered to be the premier shopping street on the south side of the Liffey, Grafton Street is also a pedestrianized venue for street musicians, performers and flower-sellers. There is the usual eclectic mix of high street shops, and ugly neon signs clash with the more classical features of such shop-fronts as Marks & Spencer. The street runs south from College Green, marked by the statue of Molly Malone (irreverently known as “the tart with the cart”), opening out onto St Stephen’s Green at the southern end. Brown Thomas is one of the street’s famous high-class department stores and Bewley’s Oriental Café, with a shop at the front selling traditional Irish foodstuffs, is another popular landmark (see Bewley’s Oriental Café).

To the west of the centre, this comprehensive exhibition, set in the old brewery building, takes the visitor step-by-step through the creation of the famous beer, from the grain to the final glass of creamy topped black liquid.

Grattan (1746–1820) entered Parliament in 1775 and was a great champion of the Catholic cause.

Art-lover Hugh Lane spent his life collecting important art, and today the permanent collection includes exceptional 20th-century work by Irish and European artists, including Manet and Degas. A new addition is the English painter Francis Bacon’s London studio.

This robust Celtic game requires hurleys (ash sticks), a sliotar (a leather ball) and plenty of energy.

The first of architect Richard Cassels’ notable Dublin houses, sadly the only part that now remains of the original is the first-floor saloon. Sir Benjamin Guinness linked two houses into one in the 1870s. His grandson, the second Earl of Iveagh, later presented the house to the Irish Government.

The writer who most prolifically put Dublin on the literary map, Joyce (1882–1941) was born and educated in the city. He met Nora Barnacle on 16 June 1904 and, although they did not marry for 30 years, it became the date for events in his epic work Ulysses , published in Paris in 1922. Dubliners (1914), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegan’s Wake (1938) are among his other works.

James Joyce spent much of his early life living to the north of the Liffey so it is a fitting area to house a museum dedicated to the Irish writer. The house, built in 1784, was leased at the turn of the 20th century by Denis J Maginnis, who makes several appearances in Joyce’s epic work Ulysses . There is a fascinating display of the biographical details of 50 of the 300 characters from Ulysses based on real Dubliners.