A “Castle,” a Library, and More

Today, my first full day in Dublin, I visited a so-called castle, a garden, a sometimes-called library, a neighbourhood, and a cathedral. But before getting into that, an apology, which is rarely a promising way to start a narrative.

I didn’t sleep well last night. As a result, not only am I not over my jet lag, but I may be even more fershimmeled today than yesterday. I don’t know why. When I go to Europe, I usually sleep well the first night and am over my jet lag by the next day. Jet lag is usually a much bigger problem for me when I return home than when I arrive in Europe.

The consequence of my state of worse-than-normal exhaustion is that, when I took a tour of Dublin Castle, my first stop of the day, I zoned out a lot while the guide spoke, and I retained little. Sorry about that.

The fried state of my mind didn’t improve as the day progressed. At the sometimes-called library (a misleading term for it; see below), I read most of the accompanying placards. However, “read” is appropriate only if words coming into one’s field of vision and ephemerally wafting through one’s mind, unanchored mentally to other words in the same sentence and paragraph, can be called reading.

The “library” provides a QR code to download a free audio guide app for smartphones. I downloaded and used it. But the commentary went in one ear and immediately out the other. If anyone walked on the other side of me from the ear where I held my iPhone they could have avoided downloading the app and just listened to the audio coming out of my transmitting ear.

The upshot is that you won’t find a lot of comprehensible details here. After you finish reading this post, you might want to demand your money back. I won’t hold it against you if you do ask for a full refund, nor will the management, because I and my imaginary management have plenty of nothing to refund you.

Okay. Let’s proceed and see how it goes. I’m not hopeful, I said hoping to lower expectations.

Dublin Castle

The Dublin Castle has a long and storied history. I know because, as I mentioned above, I took a guided tour of the castle and the tour guide provided a lot of information about the castle’s past and present. He told a lot of stories. And I seem to recall that the stories were storied, as stories can sometimes be.

Of course, sometimes stories aren’t storied. It all depends on their nature and the storytellers. But, never mind that. I’m just filling content here because I fear I don’t have much to say due to my above-mentioned mental state, or lack thereof.

The castle offers two ticketing options, a self-guided ticket and a guided tour ticket. I took the guided tour. The self-guided ticket allows you only into the state apartments. On the guided tour, the guide takes you into some otherwise locked areas in addition to taking you through the state apartments.

The additional sights on the guided tour include the Powder Tower, excavations below the Tower, and the Chapel Royal. When finished with those, the guide then takes you through the state apartments, but with live commentary not available with the self-guided ticket.

Don’t ask me why they call it the Chapel Royal rather than the Royal Chapel. Don’t get me wrong. You are of course free to ask me, but if you do you’ll be disappointed. I haven’t a clue. I thought maybe there was a French influence because French noun/adjective word orders are often (always?) the reverse of English word orders, but the French would be “la Chapelle Royale.” So it’s bad franglais, at best.

If I wasn’t so tired I might have asked the guide about that. But I was so tired. And I feared I might be the recipient of some lethal eye-rolling if I asked such a nugatory question.

So, the answer remains unknown to me. If you know the answer, please tell me in the replies below. I’m mildly curious. Other readers might be too if I ever get any other readers.

Good. That’s another couple of post-padding paragraphs done. Let’s continue. Onward. Ever onward.

The Powder Tower

The Powder Tower is so named because, in the early days of the castle, they stored gunpowder there. That was a rather bad idea. They built the castle using flammable concrete as mortar. (Today I learned that some concrete is flammable. I didn’t know that before.) The tour guide told us the ingredients of the mortar, but I forgot what they were. I remember one was something rather disgusting, and probably the flammable component, but despite remembering being disgusted by the ingredient I, for the life of me, can’t remember what it was.

(Why anyone still reads these things when I remember so little is a mystery to me. But, if it’s any consolation to civilization, only a few people read it. So I inflict suffering on just a small percentage of the Earth’s population with these posts.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Flammable mortar. That’s not a good thing to put in a building filled with gunpowder, or buildings beside it. In 1684, a fire broke out in the castle. (No, I didn’t remember the year. The guide told us, but I forgot. However, despite being a lifetime member of the highest standing in the Society of Indolent People, I took the time to look it up on the castle’s website.)

They managed to block the fire from reaching the Powder Tower by setting off some controlled explosions at points between the fire and the Powder Tower, so the tower didn’t blow up. However, the fire still destroyed much of the castle. They later built a new structure on the site, the one standing today.

Despite it still being called the Dublin Castle, it wasn’t rebuilt as a castle, but rather as a palace. Now you know why I called it a so-called castle in the opening paragraph.

Excavations

The tour guide took us down to some excavations underneath the Powder Tower. There, we saw a small portion of the original walls. According to the guide, we also saw the only part of the River Poddle that is visible in Dublin. According to the guide, the river, which flows into the River Liffey, has been subterranean for a long time and flows through the city’s sewers.

The guide said that the excavation exposed this one small section of the River Poddle. I’m skeptical. I saw a small, square, shallow pool of completely still water. Rivers tend to flow. Why was the water still if it’s part of the now subterranean river? Again, I was too tired to ask. Besides, I couldn’t think of a way to ask the question without it sounding like I was accusing the guide of lying. I’m Canadian. I worry that the government will take away my passport if I infringe on the Canadian stereotype of politeness.

The Chapel Royal

The Chapel Royal got its backwards name when King George IV attended service there in 1821. (No, I didn’t remember that from the tour. Yes, I had to look it up.) I don’t think King Charles had anything to do with reversing the normal English word order. I think he was responsible solely for someone deciding to put “Royal” in the name.

The chapel is simply lovely and lovely simple, with an attractive vaulted ceiling. It was originally an Anglican chapel, but it sat unused for some time before Irish independence. The Roman Catholics then consecrated it as a Catholic chapel. But it later lost its faith when the Catholic Church deconsecrated it. Now it’s a free spirit, beholden to no religion. These days they use it as a stop on the castle’s guided tours, a venue for some concerts, and a location for some film and television shoots. That’s all.

The columns in the church look very much like they are made of solid stone. But they aren’t.

The chapel sits on fill overtop the subterranean River Poddle. Heavy stone columns would sink into the loose soil. Instead, they are constructed from light wood coated with plaster that’s made to look exactly like stone.

I have a vague recollection of having seen something constructed using the same technique elsewhere in my travels. It might have even been recent enough to be catalogued somewhere in this journal. But for the life of me, I can’t remember where, what, or when it was. You should seriously consider finding another travel diarist to follow. Nevertheless, I persist.

The concerts held in the chapel don’t use the chapel’s organ, which is mounted high on the back wall. When the Catholics deconsecrated the chapel they distributed the organ’s pipes to other churches. Decorative placeholders sit where the pipes used to be.

State Apartments

Back when Ireland had a viceroy, the viceroys had quarters in the state apartments. They also held functions there.

Today, Ireland has presidents, not viceroys. Presidents serve seven-year terms and every seven years Ireland inaugurates its president in one of the grand rooms of the state apartments in the Dublin Castle.

The government also holds some other functions there. Consequently, they occasionally close the castle to the public. Therefore, if you plan to visit, be warned. It might not be open when you want to go. That doesn’t happen often. By some miracle, I didn’t show up on one of the few days it’s closed.

All of the rooms are richly decorated and furnished and display several paintings.

Dubh Linn Garden (aka Castle Garden)

I had a hard time figuring out what to put in the heading of this section. The garden sits just across a minor road from Dublin Castle. The tour book I consulted and some signage at the castle refer to it as the “Castle Garden.” But Google Maps and signage at the garden refer to it as “Dubh Linn Garden.” I played it safe and included the aka.

However, I’ll stick with “Dubh Linn Garden” below because that’s the name the signage at the garden uses. I figure the garden should get to choose what it wants to call itself rather than living under the yoke of a name imposed on it by others. Power to the gardens!

The Dubh Linn Garden contains a large circle of very lush grass, with sparse lines of thin stones decorating it. Garden niches surround the grass circle. It’s attractive and very relaxing.

Chester Beatty

The guidebook I use refers to this facility as the “Chester Beatty Library.” To my mind, it would be more appropriate to call it the “Chester Beatty Book Museum” instead. I know brevity is a virtue, but, in this case, two words instead of one better reflect its contents. To me, “a library” lends books, possibly only for reading in the library if it’s a reference library. But it always lets people read the books.

If the average person, or even a slightly above-average person, tried to borrow one of the books, the staff would stop them from doing so. If the person ignored the command and borrowed it anyway, the library/book museum staff would, with great urgency, involve the police in the matter.

The name provided on the facility’s website doesn’t include either “library” or “book museum.” It simply calls itself the “Chester Beatty,” without a descriptive noun. So, for the same reason I let the Dubh Linn Garden assert its own identity, that’s how I’ll refer to it.

The Chester Beatty stands immediately beside the Dubh Linn Garden. Its exhibit areas spread across three rooms. They contain several old books, manuscripts, scrolls and fragments from around the world, some dating from well over a thousand years ago.

One room contains a permanent exhibit called “Arts of the Book.” It explores the decorative aspects of ancient books.

Two display cases contain book covers from hundreds of years ago.

Look at the picture to the right. That’s just one of the two book-cover display cases. The display cases organize the covers by age. The covers on the left in the picture date from 1500 to 1650. The ones on the right date from before 1500.

They don’t make book covers like that anymore. And if they did, you’d have to be in good shape to carry even just one book around with you. Today, in contrast, I can access a full library through an iPad mini.

Another room contains a temporary exhibit titled “Sacred Traditions.” It displays old sacred texts, decorated manuscripts, and paintings from a number of religions. This exhibit focuses on Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, but it also displays artifacts from Judaism, Jainism, Sikhism and Confucianism.

A third room contains a featured exhibit called “First Fragments” displaying fragments of ancient papyrus biblical books.

The Ireland Glass Biennale

The small Coach House Gallery also sits immediately beside the Dubh Linn Garden. Coincidentally, when I walked by it held the Ireland Glass Biennale 2023. The Biennale is, as you might have guessed, a biennial juried display of glass art.

It is much smaller than the title makes it sound. I didn’t count, but I don’t think there were more than a couple of dozen pieces. Some were beautiful. Others were, to my taste, meh. One was weird.

The only glass the weird one included was a mirror. In front of the mirror, a very lifelike mannequin sits on a checkered floor mat. The mannequin was so realistic that I had to stare at it for a while to make sure it wasn’t a human holding a still pose. The mannequin wears shorts and a shirtsleeve shirt and sits on the floor with her legs extended. One of the mannequin’s arms holds a razor, positioned as if she is about to shave one of her legs.

I posted a picture of that piece here.

Temple Bar

The Temple Bar is a bar in a neighbourhood of the same name. The hood is quite lively. Charmingly modest, mostly brick buildings line cobblestone streets. Bars and restaurants, including the eponymous bar, fill many of the ground floor spaces of the buildings in the neighbourhood. Or is it an eponymous hood? I’m not sure.

The streets are car-free. That’s always a plus.

Christ Church Cathedral

I’m in Europe, so I have to visit at least one old cathedral. That’s the rule. I didn’t make it up. Okay. I did make it up, but I usually follow it.

The Christ Church Cathedral is not particularly large, but I found it quite attractive. Not breathtaking, but quite attractive.

A crypt lies below the full length of the cathedral. As you’d expect, the crypt contains some tombs. But it also contains displays of the cathedral’s mostly silver or silver-plate treasures. One treasure that isn’t silver is a collection of manuscripts assembled into a book called the Black Book. Among the manuscripts is the Christ Church’s copy of the Magna Carta. Yes, the Magna Carta.

The crypt also contains a gift shop and washrooms.

I’d like to say more about the cathedral. but I’m too tired. Please satisfy yourself with the accompanying pictures.

Aside

Both yesterday and today I saw an amphibious tour bus plying the streets of Dublin. I thought, “That looks like fun. Maybe I’ll do that while I’m here.”

Then I got a closer look. I won’t be doing that.

All of the passengers on the bus wore horned Viking helmets. It seemed to be a requirement to ride the bus because the few times I spotted it, every single passenger wore one.

Call me a stick in the mud if you must, I’ve been called worse, but I will not ride around the streets of Dublin wearing a horned Viking helmet. No how. No way.