The Top Museums in Dublin to Visit

New, small, and setting Dublin’s museum scene alight over the past few years, The Little Museum of Dublin sits in a Georgian terrace on St Stephen’s Green and goes about being a museum in a slightly different way. This accompanied-tour-only spot, which features just a handful of rooms scattered with exhibits (and the occasional more formal exhibition downstairs), tells the history of the city in comfortably under an hour. It does it well, too, by referencing soccer World Cups and long-defunct TV shows, as well as independence, tenement houses, poverty, and the fight to bring contraception to Ireland. A true cultural insight.

The name is a misnomer (it’s definitely not a library) – the free-to-enter Chester Beatty Library hosts a revolving selection of exhibitions that often relate loosely to Dublin at best. That shouldn’t put you off: Lonely Planet has called this one of the best museums in Europe, and its revolving door of attractions sourced from around the world, from Japanese Samurai culture to Middle Eastern art, is compelling. The roof garden’s a great little Dublin secret too.

An unusual modern art museum hosted in a former hospital a little out of the heart of Dublin, IMMA is a worthy aside for those of a more leftfield, contemporary artistic bent, and for those with children in tow, as it offers the chance to explore the art alongside mazes, extensive gardens, and interactive sculpture. Exhibitions regularly rotate, and some of the art here is notably weird, especially in its oblique glances at Irish culture from a colourful sideline. Charming, effortlessly so.