Apologies, this event is now cancelled. Talk presented by Dr Usama Gad, Ain Shams University, Cairo. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is one of the largest museums of antiquity in the world. Its papyrus collection tells the story of Greco-Roman Egypt and the Westerners responsible for it from its inception until the end of colonialism....
Historian Liam O'Meara will reveal that it was at Inchicore that the Grand Canal’s first lock was located; here that the old mail coaches would pass down Chapel Road to the turnpike at the Cow and Calf en route to Kildare; and of course, here that the Great Southern & Western Railway company set up...
Servants and enslavers; merchants and governors; educators and journalists – the history of the Irish in the Caribbean is complex and multifaceted. This talk will survey Irish migration to the region from the 17th century, telling the stories of a diverse range of people who set out to make new lives for themselves in places...
The strained relationship between the Irish Free State and Dublin Corporation is central to Aodh Quinlavan’s recent absorbing study which captures the mood in the capital during a period of turmoil. After the Civil War the Corporation continued to irritate the central Government with its activities. In these politically sensitive years, there was a determination...
**Booked out** Dublin City Council Historian in Residence for Dublin Central, Mary Muldowney, is working with Dr Declan O'Brien on a history of the Dublin Cattle Market from its opening in 1863 to its closure in 1973. They will be talking about their research, with particular emphasis on the testimonies of people who lived and...
Presented by Dr. James Curry, Dublin City Council Historian in Residence for the North West area. This lecture will discuss the Shelbourne FC career of Henry McKop and tell the story of the Zimbabwean footballer’s year in the League of Ireland, when he helped Shelbourne win several pieces of silverware during the Dublin club’s centenary...
Coolock Library will host Dr Ruth McManus for a fascinating talk on the development of Coolock and Artane. From the 1950s onwards, the fields and rural hinterland of Coolock, Artane and surrounding areas, were transformed into large housing developments. Dr Ruth McManus is Associate Professor in Geography and Associate Dean for Teaching & Learning at...
To celebrate the Dublin Festival of History, Experience Glasnevin is delighted to host a series of highlight tours of Glasnevin, visiting the crypt of the cemetery’s founder Daniel O’Connell, the Republican Plot and the final resting place of Michael Collins. From poets and presidents, singers and suffragettes, the ordinary and the extraordinary - the stories...
The Liberties of Dublin has historically been home to an industrial working class. Much of this history is related to brewing and distilling, and the associated businesses and trades that came with these industries. However, another industry which has all but disappeared has left a lasting legacy in terms of place names and also in...
This tour will give a brief history of the Registry of Deeds and will show how you can search our records. The records date from 1708 and relate to property transactions relating to the entire island of Ireland. They are a valuable source for family history, local history and social history in Ireland. Click here...
**Booked out** Professor Davis Coakley (1946-2022) was an outstanding physician, historian, and leader of reform in medical services and education. This inaugural Davis Coakley Memorial Lecture explores the position of the physician-historian in medical historiography, discusses Coakley’s extensive historical work (especially his many books about the history of medicine), and concludes with comments about one...
**Booked out** What impact did the Great Famine have on land ownership and estate boundaries in Ireland? What did it mean for tenant farmers and how did the landed gentry respond? Using primary archive and secondary research sources, this talk will document how the landed gentry treated their tenants, how they managed their land in...
Dublin City Council Historian in Residence, Dr Mary Muldowney, will discuss the 40th anniversary of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, including a comparison with the successful campaign for Repeal of the 8th. The fifth anniversary of that Referendum is on 25 May and the signing of Repeal into law took place on 18 September...
Presented by the Dublin City Council Archaeology and Heritage sections, in association with the Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland. This lecture will focus on the industrial heritage of the south-eastern area of Dublin City. This area has a rich industrial history including mining and quarrying, watermills, windmills, breweries, distilleries and factories, power stations and gas...
The Custom House is an iconic 18th century masterpiece in the heart of Dublin City. For over 200 years it has stood sentinel over the River Liffey, overlooking the changing of a city. It is known not only for its turbulent history but also its architectural beauty. The Custom House Visitor Centre and the Casino...
This event remembers the revolutionary and poet Dr William Drennan (1754-1820). Dr Drennan, a onetime elder of the Dublin Unitarian Church congregation, was born the son of a unitarian minister and made his life’s work the building of ‘a Brotherhood of Affection to Break Down the Brazen Walls of Separation’ which had been erected between...
Marking Ireland’s membership of the League of Nations, the National Archives, in partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Royal Irish Academy, has created an exhibition featuring records from its collections relating to Ireland’s membership of the League. The exhibition features official documents, photographs, recollections, letters and ephemera and charts the exciting early...
To celebrate the Dublin Festival of History, Experience Glasnevin is delighted to host a series of highlight tours of Glasnevin, visiting the crypt of the cemetery’s founder Daniel O’Connell, the Republican Plot and the final resting place of Michael Collins. From poets and presidents, singers and suffragettes, the ordinary and the extraordinary - the stories...
**Booked out** NO LIVESTREAM AVAILABLE Pax is the third in a trilogy of books narrating the history of the Roman Empire. The series that began with Rubicon, and continued with Dynasty, now arrives at the period which marks the apogee of the Pax Romana. It provides a portrait of the ancient world's ultimate superpower at...
Frank McDonough in conversation with Paul McGann. Established in 1918-19, in the wake of Germany's catastrophic defeat in the First World War and the revolution that followed swiftly on its heels, the Weimar Republic ushered in widespread social reform, a radical cultural flowering and the most democratic conditions the German people had ever known. The...
In this event, Ellen Rowley and Carole Pollard will draw out the links between Dublin’s buildings and Dublin’s political, social, cultural and economic histories. By focusing on architecture as the central thread in the story of the city in formation, 1900–2000, both historians will discuss and illustrate the relationship between architecture, housing and people in...
Major turning points in Irish history and great shifts in societal attitudes are often associated with progress but can also be mired in violence. Here, historian and creator of the Irish History Podcast, Fin Dwyer looks at pivotal moments in Ireland’s past – separated by time but tied together by one common trait: murder. He...
To celebrate Dublin Festival of History, the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology will be hosting a selection of tours where you can discover and engage with the Museum’s collection. On our Highlights Tour (10.30 and 15.30), see what life was like in Ireland from the Stone Age to Early Medieval Ireland. Learn all about...
Join Dublin’s Historian in Residence for Children, Dervilia Roche, for a free, interactive workshop for children aged 9 – 12. Explore the history of Richmond Barracks in puzzle form and piece together a timeline of the building’s past. Note: Children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian throughout the workshop. Click here to book.
** Booked out** An OPW Farmleigh House Guide will present and explore Irish artist Michael Angelo Hayes’ Installation of the Prince of Wales as Knight of St. Patrick, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1868- an amazing painting in Farmleigh library depicting this famous occasion and the elite guests who attended the ceremony. Step back through...
**Booked out** A walking tour of the veterans houses on Quarry Rd, Cabra built in 1920's specifically for soldiers from WW1 and their families. The houses were administered by the pioneering Sailors and Soldiers Trust an unusual North-South body that remained active after partition. The housing provided in Cabra was one of a number of...
**Booked out** Helena Murphy is a tour guide of Dublin with Original Dublin. On this unique walking tour, she will explore the LGBTQ+ history of Dublin city centre, in a year that marks 30 years since the decriminilisation of homosexuality. Original Dublin is a local tour company formed in Dublin City in 2022. Meeting at...
Liz Gillis, Mary McAuliffe and Sinead McCoole in conversation with Margaret Ward. The Irish Government launched the Decade of Centenaries in 2012 to celebrate and re-examine the major historical events during the foundation of the Irish State. At the end of the decade this expert panel will discuss the changing nature of women’s representation during...
The National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History, is pleased to present Get to the Point by Irish artist Brian Duggan. During the 1970s oil crisis, Ireland planned its first nuclear power station in an attempt to become ‘energy independent’. This project film is an examination of archival material and new footage from...
Dublin's St James's Church and Graveyard were founded between 1189-92 and dedicated to the saint believed to be buried in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. A total of about 100,000 people were buried in St James's Graveyard before its closure in 1989, most of them Catholics. The graveyard is now owned by Dublin City Council...
**Waitlist only** The Cosgrave administration officially asked renowned stained glass artist Harry Clarke to design a window as Ireland's present to the International Labour Office building in Geneva in 1927. The window was finished before Clarke died in January 1931, but it was never displayed. Join Dr John Gibney and Dr Roisin Kennedy in discussion...
Seaweed is a widely available and varied natural resource with different species used for many purposes, including food, toiletries, fertilisers, and other chemical applications. The seaweed industry is developing rapidly in the 21st century. This mirrors an explosion in the commercial trade in seaweed in the 19th century – primarily in kelp which was used...
The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation. Between 1940 and 1943, a small group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they undertook a systematic programme of forging identity...
A lecture on the remembrance of WW1 in Ireland 1919 and present day. Including the highs and lows of remembrance during the war of independence and civil war and the challenges the fledgling Irish Government faced with remembrance services in the 1920s and 30s. Who were the ex-service men and what challenges did they face?...
**Booked out** All free festival tours on the Old Liffey Ferry have now booked out, however the Old Liffey Ferry would like to offer a 25% discount code on their regular tickets for anyone who would like to book a tour outside of the festival. Please visit https://oldliffeyferry.com/ and enter the code historyfestival23 to avail of...
Poet Dermot Bolger joins historian Donal Fallon to discuss recent poems dedicated to Grace Gifford Plunkett, Herbert Simms, Nuala O’Faolain and others. Bolger will read from his collection Other People's Lives, and discuss his career, from the days of Raven Arts Press to the present day. This is an in-person event. Click here to book.
This talk will discuss research from the recent volume Ireland and the Crusades (Four Courts Press, 2022) with particular focus on the central role played by Hugh de Lacy - the first earl of Ulster - in the crusade against the 'Cathar' heretics in Southern France in the early thirteenth century. By exploring the rich...
Jim Lockhart and Barry Devlin in conversation with Doireann Ní Bhriain 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Horslips seminal album ‘The Táin’. Based on the Irish saga Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), part of the Ulster Cycle of heroic tales, it tells of the war caused by Queen Maeve’s plotting to steal...
A talk by Katherine Pangonis. Of the many cities that dot the Mediterranean coastline, Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse, Ravenna and Antioch are among the oldest and most intriguing. All are beautifully situated, and for history and cultural riches they are rivalled only by their sister cities of Rome, Istanbul and Jerusalem. Yet their fates have been...
Panel discussion with Cormac Moore, Diarmaid Ferriter and Síobhra Aiken The Land Border between Northern and Southern Ireland was originally intended as an administrative boundary between two devolved parts of the United Kingdom. By the end of 1922 it marked the border between the UK and the new “Irish Free State”. In this event, Dublin...
**Booked out** Tour of the old British military cemetery at Blackhorse Avenue, by the Phoenix Park. Through the cemetery we will see the span of the British Empire and the Irish involvement in it, from the Indian wars to the Boer War to the First and Second World Wars. There is a special emphasis on...
Dan Stone in conversation with Robert Gerwarth. The Holocaust is much-discussed, much-memorialised and much-portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked. Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust and across the world, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone reveals how the idea of ‘industrial murder’ is incomplete: many were...
Learn drawing techniques, including line drawing, shading, perspective, and decoration during these relaxed and informal sessions with Roxana Manouchehri. This workshop will focus on drawing historical costumes inspired by the Chester Beatty collections. Materials are provided but please feel free to bring your favourites. Suitable for adults and teens. No booking required.
**Waitlist only** Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, creators of the celebrated Bad Bridget podcast, join Anna Carey to discuss the Bad Bridget project. Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Bad Bridget explores the remarkable lives of some Irish emigrant women. This is an in-person...
Join us for a talk on the the events of this momentous year in Rathfarnham, where we will be sketching out the background of the owners of Rathfarnham Castle at the time and their involvement, before placing the events in the locality within the Dublin and Leinster context. Booking: Call (01) 493 9462 or email...
Conradh na Gaeilge ag léiriú Painéal de thriúr + óstach 120 bliain ó ceapadh an Baile Átha Cliathach Pádraig Mac Piarais mar Eagarthóir ar An Claidheamh Soluis, nuachtán Chonradh na Gaeilge, óstálfaidh Conradh na Gaeilge, le tacaíocht ón Roinn Turasóireachta, Cultúir, Ealaíon, Gaeltachta, Spóirt agus Meán, pléphleainéal ar obair an Phiarsaigh mar iriseoir, scríbhneoir, agus...
In her latest book, Mary Beard focuses on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not the usual chronological account of Roman rulers: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power...
100 bliain tar éis deireadh Chogadh na gCarad, pléfear na dúshláin agus na deacrachtaí a bhí ag pobal na Gaeilge agus na heagraíochtaí athbheochana sna 1920í. An raibh ról ann fós do Chonradh na Gaeilge? Cén tionchar a bhí ag bunú na stáit nua agus Cogadh na gCarad ar chúrsaí chultúir agus teanga in Éirinn?...
Mark Jones in conversation with Jennifer Wellington. 1923 was one of the most remarkable years of modern European history. In January, France and Belgium militarily occupied Germany’s economic heartland, the Ruhr, triggering a series of crises that almost spiralled out of control. Hyperinflation plunged millions into poverty and Hitler’s populism ascended to national prominence. In...
**Booked out** All free festival tours on the Old Liffey Ferry have now booked out, however the Old Liffey Ferry would like to offer a 25% discount code on their regular tickets for anyone who would like to book a tour outside of the festival. Please visit https://oldliffeyferry.com/ and enter the code historyfestival23 to avail of...