We took a tour of the Little Museum of Dublin, located in a Georgian building across from St. Stephen’s Green.
The museum is filled with artifacts donated by the people of Dublin.
These artifacts cover the history of the city by decade from WWI through to the 1990’s. The tour touched on tenement life, the world wars, the fight for independence, cultural liberalization in the 1960’s and 70’s, and ended with a room dedicated to the band U2.
To start the tour, our guide June requested a volunteer to sound a WWII air raid siren. Nobody else seemed interested, so I stepped up. With no actual bombs in the sight, I found I much enjoyed vigorously cranking the rotating handle until the siren was wailing loudly, and then letting go to enable the frequency of the siren to gradually drop as the handle slowed down.
In one corner was a scale model of Nelson’s Pillar, which was erected on O’Connell Street in Dublin by the British in 1809. It remained there until 1966 when it was partially blown up by the IRA. The British army later destroyed the remaining stump. (Some older Irish people in our tour group remembered going up Nelson’s Pillar to the observation deck when they were younger.)
In 2003 a replacement monument was installed at the site, this time in the form of a 120m tall metal spiked formally named the Monument of Light, but commonly referred to as “the spire”. As this was near our hotel, we walked past it often every day and noticed how it changed appearance depending on the lighting and time.
Not everything in the museum is politics and war, however. There are also humorous artifacts related to Dubliner’s contributions to pop culture.
After the tour we went downstairs to the Hatch & Sons restaurant in the basement. There we enjoyed vegetable lentil soup with brown soda bread and butter, an Irish spiced beef blaas (a type of soft white roll) with onion relish and rapeseed mayo, and a light and creamy-textured flourless orange-almond cake. This meal was tied with Brother Hubbard‘s brunch for the best food we had in Dublin.
