Custom House

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  • Address
    Visitor Centre, Northside, Custom House Quay, city centre
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  • Phone
    888 2538
  • Transport
    bus: all cross-city buses

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Lonely Planet review

Georgian genius James Gandon (1743-1823) announced his arrival on the Dublin scene with this magnificent building (1781-91), constructed just past Eden Quay at a wide stretch in the River Liffey. When it was being built, angry city merchants and dockers from the original Custom House further upriver in Temple Bar were so menacing that Gandon often came to work wielding a broadsword.

He was supported by the era's foremost property developer, Luke Gardiner, who saw the new Custom House as a major part of his scheme to shift the axis of the city eastwards from medieval Capel St to what was then Gardiner's Mall (now O'Connell St).

It's a colossal, neoclassical pile that stretches for 114m along the River Liffey. It can only be taken in and admired from the south side of the river, although its fine detail deserves closer inspection. Arcades, each with seven arches, join the centre to the end pavilions and the columns along the front have harps carved in their capitals. Motifs alluding to transport and trade include the four rooftop statues of Neptune, Mercury, Plenty and Industry, destroyed when the building was gutted in a five-day fire during the independence struggle in 1921, but replaced in 1991. The interior was extensively redesigned after 1921 and again in the 1980s. Below the frieze are heads representing the gods of Ireland's 13 principal rivers, and the sole female head, above the main door, represents the River Liffey. The cattle heads honour Dublin's beef trade, and the statues behind the building represent Africa, America, Asia and Europe. The building is topped by a copper dome with four clocks and, above that, a 5m-high statue of Hope.

Beneath the dome, the Visitor Centre features a small museum on Gandon and the history of the building.

Just outside the Custom House, on Custom House Quay, is a remarkable set of life-size bronze figures by Rowan Gillespie (1997), a memorial to the victims of the Famine (1845-49). The sullen, haunted figures are a powerful reminder of the worst tragedy in Irish history.