Home Walking tours by city Dublin
Self-Guided Walking Tours in Dublin
Dublin's centre is small enough to cross in half an hour, and it is divided by the Liffey into a northside and southside that Dubliners will tell you are entirely different places.
It is a literary city in a way that is genuinely legible on the ground — Joyce set Ulysses on real streets on a real day, and you can still walk most of it. That is the strongest case for narration here: the buildings themselves are handsome Georgian brick and often unremarkable, and what makes them worth stopping at is what happened inside them.
Takes about a minute. Dublin is already filled in — choose your time, pace and interests and the route is planned around them.
What to build a Dublin walking tour around
Trinity College and the Book of Kells
Founded 1592. The Long Room holds about 200,000 of the library's oldest books, and the college has a legal right to a copy of everything published in Ireland and the UK.
Kilmainham Gaol
Where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed. Closed in 1924 and restored largely by volunteers from the 1960s.
The GPO on O'Connell Street
Headquarters of the Rising, and the bullet marks in the columns are still there.
St Stephen's Green
Private railed gardens until 1880, when a Guinness paid to open them to the public. The Rising's fighting here paused daily so the groundsman could feed the ducks.
The Guinness Storehouse
The brewery signed a 9,000-year lease on the site in 1759 at £45 a year. Ireland's most-visited paid attraction.
Georgian Dublin
Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares — the doors are painted in different colours, and the popular story that it was to help drunks find home is almost certainly invention.
Three routes worth walking in Dublin
Literary Dublin
Trinity, Sweny's Chemist, the Joyce sites around Merrion Square, Davy Byrnes and the writers' pubs — Ulysses at ground level.
1916 and independence
The GPO, O'Connell Street, the Garden of Remembrance and out to Kilmainham — the Rising as a geography rather than a date.
Southside Georgian squares
St Stephen's Green, Merrion Square, the National Gallery and the Grand Canal, through the best-preserved Georgian streetscape in the British Isles.
Practical notes for walking Dublin
- Terrain and surfaces
- Flat and compact. Pavements are decent, some cobbled lanes in Temple Bar. Rain is the actual terrain issue — plan for it rather than around it.
- Best time to walk
- May to September for daylight, which runs to nearly 10pm in June. Expect rain in any month.
- Driving here
- The centre is congested and one-way heavy. Driving pays off for the coast road to Howth, the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough.
- Size
- Dublin, Leinster, Ireland — population about 590,000.
Neighbourhoods worth a route of their own
Not just walking
The same route planner covers Dublin on foot, at a run, by bike, by car and with wheelchair-accessible routing that avoids steps and kerbs rather than simply relabelling the walking route. Pick the way you are getting around and the stops, distances and timings are planned for it.
Start one now for Dublin: driving tour · wheelchair-accessible route · cycling tour
Or read more: self-guided driving tours · accessible tours · audio tours
Questions about walking Dublin
Can you walk Dublin's main sights in a day?
Yes — the centre is about 2 km across, and Trinity, the Green, the GPO and Christ Church are all within it. Kilmainham and the Guinness Storehouse are a 30-minute walk west, which is the only real stretch.
Is a Dublin literary walk worth doing self-guided?
It suits self-guided particularly well, because the sites are unremarkable to look at and the value is entirely in the stories. Being able to stop for as long as you like at Sweny's or Davy Byrnes is the point.
What is a self-guided walking tour?
A route you walk on your own schedule, with the commentary delivered to your phone instead of by a guide. There is no meeting point and no group — you start when you want, stop as long as you like at anything that interests you, and skip anything that does not.
How is this different from a guided walking tour?
A guided tour runs to someone else's schedule and someone else's route, and it covers what the guide covers. This builds the route around the time you actually have, the pace you want to walk at and the things you said you were interested in — and it will wait as long as you like at any stop.
Can I do a driving tour instead of walking?
Yes. Walking, running, cycling, driving and wheelchair-accessible routing are all supported, and each uses routing built for that mode — a driving tour follows roads and sensible parking, a walking tour uses paths and crossings.
Other cities
- Self-guided walking tours in Edinburgh
- Self-guided walking tours in Budapest
- Self-guided walking tours in Madrid
- All 43 city guides
A 24-hour pass is $6.95 and covers unlimited tours. Joining someone else’s tour is free.