St Stephen's Green

St Stephen's Green is the green heart of Georgian Dublin and the park you will cross again and again during any visit, because it sits at the top of Grafton Street, beside the Luas green line and within a few minutes of the National Museum, the National Gallery and the Little Museum of Dublin. It covers more than nine hectares, a square of lawns, trees and water ringed by some of the city's finest Georgian and Victorian buildings, including the Shelbourne hotel on its northern side. The Green was enclosed in the seventeenth century and for many years was a private park for the residents of the surrounding square, until Sir Arthur Guinness, later Lord Ardilaun, of the brewing family, paid for its redesign and had it reopened to everyone in 1880. His statue sits on the western side. The Victorian layout he commissioned survives almost intact: an ornamental lake with ducks, a stone bridge and a waterfall, formal flowerbeds, a bandstand where free concerts are held on summer lunchtimes, a playground, and a garden for the visually impaired, with scented plants and labels in Braille. The park is also full of monuments. At the Grafton Street corner, Fusiliers' Arch commemorates Irish soldiers of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in the Boer War. Inside are Henry Moore's sculpture in memory of W. B. Yeats, a fountain of the Three Fates given by Germany in thanks for Ireland's care of German children after the Second World War, and the striking granite memorial to Wolfe Tone. The park is cared for by the Office of Public Works, is free to enter and is open daily from early morning until around dusk.

The 1916 story: during the Easter Rising, members of the Irish Citizen Army, with Countess Markievicz among their officers, occupied the Green and dug trenches, before being forced to withdraw under machine-gun fire from the Shelbourne hotel into the Royal College of Surgeons on the west side. A much-loved story holds that the fighting paused each day so the park keeper could feed the ducks. Look closely at Fusiliers' Arch and you can still see bullet marks from the fighting. A bust of Markievicz stands in the park, and the park's free audio guide, available through the GuidiGO app, tells the story of its monuments as you walk.

Using the park well: the Green is at its best on a fine day around lunchtime, when office workers spread out on the lawns and the bandstand may have music, and in the early morning, when it is quiet and the light is soft on the lake. It is a perfect pause between sights, and a good place for a picnic bought from the food halls and delis around Grafton Street. Children love feeding the ducks and the playground. Dog owners are asked to follow the park's code of conduct, and drones are banned. The gates close around dusk, earlier in winter.

Around it: Grafton Street, Dublin's main shopping street, runs from the Fusiliers' Arch corner down to Trinity College, with buskers and classic pubs in the side streets. The Little Museum of Dublin is on the north side of the Green, and the Shelbourne is the place for afternoon tea or a drink in its famous Horseshoe Bar. Just south, behind Harcourt Street, the Iveagh Gardens are a quieter, half-hidden park with a cascade, rose garden and maze, and Merrion Square, with its colourful Georgian doors and Oscar Wilde statue, is ten minutes east. Together they make an easy, free afternoon walk through the elegant south side.