2004 Europe

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin



June 19 – This morning we reboarded our bus for a city tour of Dublin. Billy drove us around while Liam filled us in on all the surroundings. We drove past Christ’s Church Cathedral and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (above). It’s odd that in Dublin, the capital of a 95% Catholic nation there are two cathedrals, both Protestant. We went out to the Phoenix Park where both the President of Ireland and the US Ambassador have estates. We stopped at the large cross erected in the park to commemorate the Pope’s visit in the 1980s. We stopped at Ashton castle (below). It’s more like the usual castle we’ve been seeing in Ireland, just a large tower or keep, no walls or turrets.



Then in the afternoon, Diana and I walked the city to the sights we wanted to see. We went to Trinity College where they have the Book of Kells. It’s a book containing the four gospels in Latin. It was produced by the monks of a monastery in Kells, hence the name. It is heavily illustrated and was written in the 800s. They were displaying one page of text and one illustrated page. The book is a fairly large format and the two pages it was open to only held 18 verses. The illustrated page was the first page of the book of John (below). The entire page was covered with illustrations and designs and the only word on the page was ‘In’ from John 1:1. It was amazing. The display it under protective glass, in a very dimly lit room of the Trinity College library.



From there we walked across town along the River Liffy. We stopped in a Middle Eastern fast food place and had shish sandwiches. Essentially they are roasted meat, with some lettuce, tomato, and chili sauce all wrapped in Nan bread. They were great!! We continued on to Christ’s Church Cathedral, the site of the largest medieval crypt in Europe. There were some beautifully carved tombs there, including one for the surgeon on the HMS Enterprise during a trip to the North Pole. He was 28 years old and died at latitude 27 North. In the church proper there are several important graves, the most prominent being that of Strongbow, the man who came to Ireland as a mercenary for an Irish king and married his daughter and began the English takeover of Ireland. In a heart shaped reliquary up beside the altar is the heart of St. Lawrence O’Toole, a reforming prelate in Ireland. Beside the church is the ruin of the early Viking worship site. Dublin was originally a Viking settlement.



From there we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The major attraction here is the grave and memorial of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels. They have some very nice stained glass windows. I noticed an interesting motif on the iron grille work around the choir. It had shamrocks and oak leaves, they symbols or Ireland and England (below). I love it when architects work symbols into the more ordinary parts of a structure. Then it was back to the river, which we crossed on the Ha’penny Bridge, so called because there used to be a halfpenny toll to cross it. It’s a very typical Victorian structure. Somewhat ornate, but very functional and sturdy.



On the way back to the hotel we walked down O’Connell Street past the O’Connell monument. I noticed that some of the bronze castings had holes in them. You can see one below in the angel’s right breast. I asked our guide, Liam, about them and he said that in the 1916 rebellion some of the soldiers had shot holes in the statues.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger