Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA)

The Irish Museum of Modern Art, known to everyone as IMMA, is the best free visit in the west of the city and a beautiful place to spend an afternoon even if contemporary art is not usually your thing. The building is half the attraction. IMMA occupies the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, completed in the 1680s as a home for retired soldiers and modelled on Les Invalides in Paris; it is one of the finest seventeenth-century buildings in Ireland, a great classical quadrangle built around a cobbled courtyard, with a chapel, a great hall and long arcaded corridors. It was restored and opened as the national museum of modern art in 1991. Inside, the former living quarters make a series of light, intimate galleries for the museum's collection of Irish and international art from the twentieth century to the present, and for a changing programme of exhibitions, which over the years have brought major names such as Lucian Freud and Wolfgang Tillmans to Dublin. Admission to the museum is free, and so is entry to most exhibitions, with occasional ticketed shows. Outside, the grounds cover about forty-eight acres and are a joy: a restored formal garden laid out in geometric beds with clipped hedges and a central fountain; wildflower meadows; a long tree-lined avenue to the old western gate; and views across the Liffey valley. Fruition runs the cafés, with an outdoor café in the courtyard and an indoor café in the vaults. The museum is closed on Mondays except bank holidays and opens later on Wednesdays and Sundays.

How to visit: you do not need to book for most exhibitions, so simply walk in, pick up a map at the front desk and wander. Start with whatever temporary exhibitions are on, then explore the collection galleries, and leave time for the building itself: the chapel, with its carved woodwork and decorated ceiling, and the great hall are highlights. Then go outside to the formal garden, which is lovely from spring to autumn, and walk the meadows. Allow an hour and a half to two hours. In summer, the meadows host outdoor reading and events, and IMMA's grounds are a venue for concerts. Check the website before going: IMMA is a national cultural institution, and some national institutions closed on strike days in autumn 2026, while archive pages on its own site can show outdated hours.

Who it suits: art lovers obviously, but also families, who can let children run in the meadows and garden, couples looking for a calm, free afternoon, and anyone visiting Kilmainham Gaol, which is directly across the road. Contemporary art can be challenging, and some shows are more accessible than others, so if you are unsure, focus on the building and gardens and dip into the galleries. Parking on site is paid.

Getting there and combining: IMMA is about ten minutes on foot from Heuston station and the Luas red line, and around half an hour's walk from Christ Church. The obvious pairing is Kilmainham Gaol: book your gaol tour, then spend the time before or after at IMMA, ideally with lunch in the café. Together with the Guinness Storehouse, about twenty minutes' walk east, they make a classic west-side day. The old Bully's Acre burial ground, one of the oldest cemeteries in Dublin, lies next to the grounds, and Phoenix Park is just across the river. If you arrive at the museum's main gate on the Military Road side, walk the long avenue of trees toward the building for the full effect of its classical facade; if you come from the Kilmainham side, finish with that view on the way out. The courtyard café, with tables under the arcades, is one of the most pleasant places in the west of the city for a coffee, rain or shine, and the shop stocks good art books and design gifts.