Dublin

‘A good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub’, mused Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses. A conundrum, given there’s at least one on every street, but the answer is simple: go into each one you find. Over a hundred years later, the centre of all social life in Dublin remains the bar. There are more than 700, from traditional boozers, such as John Mulligan's, to the trendiest watering holes. It’s where you’ll meet Dubliners at their convivial, easy-going best and get a sense of what makes this city tick.

Since its foundation in 1592, Trinity College has become one of the world’s most famous universities; it's the alma mater of Swift, Wilde and Beckett; it's where you'll find the most beautiful library in the whole country and the home of the world’s most famous illuminated Gospel, the Book of Kells. Its 16 hectares are an oasis of aesthetic elegance, its cobbled quadrangles lined with handsome neoclassical buildings that lend an air of magisterial calm to the campus, evident as soon as you walk through Front Arch.

The artefacts of a nation are to be found in this eminent institution, which opened in 1890 with a fine collection of coins, medals and Irish antiquities. The collection has grown significantly since then, and now numbers in excess of four million objects split across three separate museum buildings, including prehistoric archaeological finds and Celtic and medieval treasures, an extensive folklore collection, and the stuffed beasts and skeletons of the natural history section.

Hanging on the walls of a magnificent Georgian pile is arguably the city’s finest collection of modern and contemporary art, which runs the gamut from impressionist masterpieces (Degas, Monet, Manet et al) to Irish artists such as Dorothy Cross and Sean Scully. The gallery’s extra-special treat is Dublin-born Francis Bacon’s actual London studio, brought over piece by piece and painstakingly reassembled in all its glorious mess – you can't step inside it but you can observe exactly how the artist lived and worked, down to the minute details.

Ireland’s struggle for independence was a bloody and tempestuous journey, and this forbidding prison on the western edge of the city played a role in it for nearly 150 years, as the forced temporary home of many a rebel and revolutionary. Unoccupied since 1924, it is now a museum with an enthralling exhibit on the history of Irish nationalism. The guided tour of its grim cells and corridors is highly memorable and it finishes in the yard where the leaders of the failed 1916 Easter Rising were executed.

It was unthinkable less than two decades ago, but Dublin's foodie scene is now one of the city's major highlights. There are restaurants to suit every taste and budget, but the most exciting ones are the places – such as Richmond – that have led the way in defining Modern Irish cuisine, a catholic style that uses the basic ingredients and recipes of Irish cuisine and infuses them with influences from virtually every other cuisine in the world.

One of the world’s most famous beer brands is Guinness, as inextricably linked with Dublin as James Joyce and…no, we can’t think of anything else. An old fermentation plant in the St James's Gate Brewery has been converted into a seven-storey museum devoted to the beer, the company’s history, how the beer is made and how it became the brand it is today. The top floor is an atrium bar, where you put the theory to the test and drink a pint; just below it is an excellent spot for lunch.

Dublin is blessed with green spaces, but none is so popular or so beloved by its citizens as St Stephen’s Green, whose main entrance is through an arch at the southern end of Grafton St. When the sun burns through the cloud cover, virtually every blade of grass is occupied, by students, lovers and workers on a break. Many a business meeting is conducted along its pathways, which run by flower gardens, playgrounds and old Victorian bandstands.

The State’s art collection is an impressive one, a history of art spread across six centuries and 54 separate galleries, which have just reopened after a major refurbishment. The marquee names include Goya, Caravaggio and Van Gogh, but no less impressive are the paintings by luminaries such as Orpen, Reynolds and Van Dongen. Don’t miss the paintings by Jack B Yeats, or the seasonal exhibit of watercolours by JMW Turner; as you find your way there, you’ll pass the odd Rembrandt, Velázquez and Vermeer.

Alfred Chester Beatty was a mining magnate with exceedingly good taste, and the fruit of his aesthetic sensibility is gathered in this remarkable museum. Books, manuscripts and scrolls were his particular love, and his collection includes one of the world’s finest gatherings of Qu’rans, the finest collection of Chinese jade books in existence, and some of the earliest biblical parchments ever found. The remainder of the collection is fleshed out with tablets, paintings, furniture and other beautiful objets d’art.