Glasnevin Travel Guide

The suburb of Glasnevin , a couple of miles north of O'Connell Street (take bus #13, #19 and #19A, or from Abbey Street Middle #34 and #34A), has two attractions to recommend it. The National Botanic Gardens (March-Oct Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 11am-6pm; Nov-Feb Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun 11am-4.30pm; free), founded in 1795, is a quiet open space with a couple of large greenhouses dating from the mid-nineteenth century designed by Richard Turner, who also constructed the glasshouse at Belfast's Botanic Gardens and the magnificent Palm House at Kew Gardens in London. Ireland's mild climate makes it an excellent place for growing exotic species - witness all those palm trees you see in front gardens along the seafront - and the Botanic Gardens were the first place in the world, in 1844, to raise orchids from seed, and the first place in Europe to grow pampas grass and the giant lily successfully.

Close by is Prospect Cemetery (daily 8.30am-4pm; guided tours late May-Sept Sun 11.30am; free), which started out as a burial place for Roman Catholics in 1832. Its jungle of patriotic iconography - shamrocks, high crosses, and harps - are eerily surveyed by the watchtowers in the walls from which sentries would endeavour to deter body snatchers in the nineteenth century. The Prospect is, in many ways, a good place to end a trip to Dublin as so many of the city's important historical figures are buried here: the politicians Daniel O'Connell , who died in 1847 but whose body was brought here in 1869; Charles Stewart Parnell ; Sir Roger Casement, who was executed as a traitor by the British government in 1916; and the Independence fighter Michael Collins. Countess Markievicz and Maud Gonne MacBride were also both laid to rest here, as was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. After a trip to the graveyard, drop in for a pint at nearby Kavanagh's (commonly known as The Gravediggers ), one of Dublin's finest old pubs, where mourners have sought solace since 1833.