local studies

This gallery consists of images of Dublin street furniture, sculptures, statues and other landmarks, many of which you might not even notice as you walk by. The photographs are from the Photographing Dublin Collection, a collection of circa 900 photographs all taken by Dublin City Public Libraries staff during 2006. The Collection is held in the Dublin City Library and Archive.

The "Dublin in the Detail" gallery was created by Stephanie Krall, a German intern from the University of Applied Sciences in Kehl, during her internship in Dublin City Council in spring 2013.

View Dublin in the Detail Image Gallery

View Gloucester Diamond Image Gallery

The Gloucester Diamond got its name from the diamond-shaped intersection at Gloucester Place and Sean Macdermott Street. Colloquially, ‘The Diamond’ refers not just to Gloucester Place, but the entire area surrounding it. It is recorded in Thomas Campbell’s map of 1811 which predates the first Ordnance Survey maps of the area (1829-41).

Sean Macdermott Street was then called Gloucester Street, and received its present name in 1933. The Diamond was located not only in the heart of the city but also in the heart of one of Dublin’s former red-light districts, the infamous 'Monto', which comprised the area enclosed by Summerhill in the north, Talbot Street in the South, Marlborough Street to the west and Buckingham Street/Portland Row to the east. Read more »

The 16th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Commemorative Lecture, titled "Dublin after Dark: Glimpses of Life in an Early Modern City", and given by Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Local Historian, on Wednesday 23rd January 2013, in the Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin 2.

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We all have our favourite books from childhood: fairy tales, Alice in wonderland, Paddington bear, Where the wild things are, The railway children, Matilda, The secret garden, The wind in the willows, Gulliver’s travels and Robinson Crusoe. These books affected us profoundly and maybe even changed our lives. But suppose we grew up in the 18th century, what could we have read? We would have had Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Gulliver’s travels (1726), in versions specially geared towards children, with simplified language and pictures. Fairy tales excited and terrified children then as now, and created fantasy worlds that adults did not always approve of. Read more »

Dublin Digital Day Event, Grafton Street, Friday, 8th March.

Create a digital memory, using your old photographs, on Digital Dublin Day, Friday 8th March. 

Do you have some old photographs of Dublin or Dubliners lying around at home? Perhaps a snapshot of friends meeting under Clery's Clock? Or photographs that show Dublin shops, pubs or other buildings in the background? Read more »

Between 1845 and 1850, out of a population of approximately 8.2 million, some one million died and another million were forced to emigrate. By 1881 the population had fallen to 5.2 million and continued to fall for many more years. The Great Famine, otherwise known as the Great Hunger, impacted on Ireland and her people like no other event in history, and in world terms the famine is rightly termed one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern era.

In recent times a number of new histories of the great famine have been published, and having just finished reading one of these, I thought I might stir your interest in this period of Irish history by reference to those recent publications that have come to my attention.  Read more »