Kilmainham Gaol

Kilmainham Gaol is the most moving visit in Dublin, and for many travellers the one that explains Ireland. It opened in 1796 as the new county jail and closed in 1924, and in between it held thieves, debtors, famine-era children jailed for stealing food, and, generation after generation, the rebels of every Irish rising — the United Irishmen of 1798, Robert Emmet, the Young Irelanders, the Fenians, Charles Stewart Parnell, and the men and women of 1916. Entry is by guided tour only, and the guides are superb: they walk you through the cramped, dark old west wing, where prisoners once slept five to a cell lit by a single candle, then into the bright, galleried Victorian East Wing of 1862, a vast vaulted hall of iron walkways and cell doors that you may recognise from films including In the Name of the Father and The Italian Job. The story builds to the Stonebreakers' Yard, where fourteen leaders of the Easter Rising were executed by firing squad in May 1916. The executions turned public opinion and set Ireland on the road to independence, and standing where they happened, with the guide telling their last hours, is unforgettable. The tour also tells of Grace Gifford, who married Joseph Plunkett in the prison chapel hours before he was shot. After the hour-long tour, a museum covers the prison's history and the restoration of the building by volunteers from the 1960s. Tickets cost very little but are scarce, so planning is everything.

Booking is the whole game. Kilmainham is run by the Office of Public Works, and tour tickets are sold only on the museum's own website and on Heritage Ireland; tickets bought from third-party sites are not valid, which is why we link straight to the official booking. Tickets go on sale online up to twenty-eight days ahead, released at midnight Irish time, and popular tours, especially in summer and at weekends, can sell out within days of release. If you miss out, a small number of extra and cancellation tickets for the same day are released online early each morning, typically around a quarter past nine, so set an alarm and refresh. Groups of ten or more must book separately by email.

Visiting well: arrive fifteen minutes before your tour at the Courthouse Visitor Centre beside the gaol, where you check in and where the café and shop are; on the last two tours of the day, arrive thirty to forty minutes early, as you visit the museum before rather than after the tour. Allow about ninety minutes in total. The building is unheated and genuinely cold in winter, so dress warmly. Buggies, wheeled bags and large luggage are not allowed on the tour, and there are no secure lockers for big items. The tour is not recommended for children under six because of its length and subject matter, but older children and teenagers often find it the highlight of the trip. The gaol is wheelchair accessible, and a ground-floor tour can be arranged in advance for visitors with limited mobility.

Getting there: Kilmainham is about three kilometres west of the city centre. Buses run along the quays and Inchicore Road, the Luas red line stops a ten-minute walk away, and there is no parking on site. Combine it with the Irish Museum of Modern Art in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham across the road, whose formal gardens and courtyard are free to wander, and with the Guinness Storehouse fifteen minutes' walk east. Read a little about 1916 before you go if you can, but you do not need to: the guides assume nothing, and you will leave understanding modern Ireland far better than when you arrived.