Page 95 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Ireland

NOR TH OF THE LIFFEY  93

Rising and the Irish Civil War.
Since the 1960s many of the old
buildings have been replaced
by the plate glass and neon of
fast-food joints, amusement
arcades and chain stores.
A few venerable buildings
remain, such as the General
Post Office (1818), Gresham
Hotel (1817), the former Clery’s
depart ment store (1822) and
the Royal Dublin Hotel, part of
which occupies the street’s only
original town house.
A walk down the central mall
is the most enjoyable way The busy thoroughfare of O’Connell Street
to see the street’s mix of
architectural styles and take a Pioneer Total Abstinence 4 St Mary’s Pro-
close look at the Movement. At the north end of
series of monuments the street is the Cathedral
lining the route. At the obelisk-shaped 83 Marlborough St. Map D2. Tel 874
south end stands a monument to 5441. Open 7:30am–6:45pm Mon–Fri
massive monument to Charles Stewart Parnell (to 7:15pm Sat), 9am–1:45pm & 5:30–
Daniel O’Connell (see p46), (1846–91), who was 7:45pm Sun, 10am–1:30pm public hols.
unveiled in 1882. The leader of the Home Rule ∑ procathedral.ie
street, which throughout Party and known as the
the 19th century had “uncrowned King of Dedicated in 1825 before Catholic
been called Sackville Ireland” (see p47). The Dublin emancipation (see p46), St Mary’s
Street, was renamed after Spire sits on the site where backstreet site was the best the
O’Connell in 1922. Higher Nelson’s column used to be. city’s Anglo-Irish leaders would
up, almost facing the It is a stainless steel, allow a Catholic cathedral.
General Post Office, is conical spire which The façade is based on a
an animated statue of Statue of James Larkin tapers from a 3-m Greek temple. Doric columns
James Larkin, leader (1981) in O’Connell Street (10-ft) diameter base support a pediment with
of the Dublin general to a 10-cm (4-in) statues of St Mary, St Patrick
strike in 1913. The next statue is pointed tip of optical glass at a and St Laurence O’Toole,
of Father Theobald Mathew height of 120 m (394 ft), making 12th-century Archbishop of
(1790–1856), founder of the it the city’s tallest structure. Dublin and patron saint of the
city. Inside, one striking feature is
The General Post Office (GPO) the intricately carved high altar.
St Mary’s is home to the
Built in 1818 halfway along famous Palestrina Choir, with
O’Connell Street, the GPO became which the great tenor John
a symbol of the 1916 Irish Rising. McCormack (see p28) began his
Members of the Irish Volunteers career in 1904. The choir still
and Irish Citizen Army seized the sings on Sundays at 11am.
building on Easter Monday, and
Patrick Pearse (see p48) read out
the Proclamation of the Irish
Republic in front of it. The rebels
remained inside for a week, but
shelling from the British eventually
forced them out. At first, many
viewed the Rising unfavourably.
However, as W B Yeats wrote,
matters “changed utterly” and
a “terrible beauty was born”
when, during the following
Irish Life magazine cover show ing the weeks, 14 of the leaders were
1916 Easter Rising caught and shot at Kilmainham
Gaol (see p101). A museum has a
copy of the 1916 Proclamation and accounts from the staff who were
working that day. It also explores the influence of the post office in
Ireland, and has a beautiful stamp collection. Austere Neo-Classical interior of
St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral

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