Day Three: Cathedral and Library

Our first stop today was St. Patrick's Cathedral, the largest church in Ireland, and the site of the very first performance of Handel's Messiah. How magnificent it must have been to hear it for the first time in such a place!

Jonathan Swift was Dean of the cathedral from 1713 to 1745, and we saw his epitaph, which he wrote himself. He is buried under the cathedral floor. In fact, some 500 notable people have been buried there. There are lots of beautiful stained glass windows, but no ornate statues like one sees in Roman Catholic cathedrals.

The original church, which was dedicated on the 17th of March, 1191, was supposedly built on the site where St. Patrick baptized the first Irish Christians in the 5th century. Legend has it that a well (just perfect for baptising activities) existed in what is now the park adjacent to the cathedral.

The unusual stone statue of St. Patrick (left) is composed of three different parts: the body is from the 13th century, the head from the 17th century, and the base from the 19th. The broken parts were discovered during a restoration of a section of the cathedral in the late 1800s.

The grave slabs (right) give us a look at the ancient history of the site. These are stone slabs that were laid over early Christian graves. Estimated to be 1,000 years old, they show that the site was in use by early Christians well before the cathedral existed.

After the cathedral, we visited the National Library and spent some time in the William Butler Yeats exhibit. It was cool to see drafts of his poems in his own hand. The exhibit is also online, so if you're interested, you can see it here.

We learned that the library had two other exhibits that interested us. One was on WWI, and was almost next door. The other was The 1916 Rising: Personalities and Perspectives — an exhibition of photographs in a gallery in the Temple Bar area. It was getting late, so after seeing the WWI exhibit, we had to decide whether to continue with our plan to see the Dublin Writer's Museum, or walk back to Temple Bar and see photographs of the Easter Rising. We chose the latter.

The gallery was very well hidden, and it took us a while to find it. Then five minutes after we entered, having looked at a handful of photos in the lobby, a pasty, humourless employee informed us that it was 4:45, closing time (!) and we had to leave. Argh! The good thing is that the exhibition can be viewed online, so we will still get to see it. And so can you...right here.

We enjoyed some live music and beverages at a busy pub in Temple Bar, then called it a day. Even though we ran out of time, we enjoyed ourselves, and feel inspired to do further research on the many things that interested us so much.