The capital of Ireland is jam-packed with people—the country’s largest city is home to about a quarter of the entire Irish population. Dublin is also crammed with gorgeous buildings, the oldest of which is nearly a millennium in age. (Nope, it’s not a bar, although the oldest pub dates from 1198). So, wherever I strolled—along the River Liffey, to and from greens and gardens, during pub crawls—I was constantly surrounded by centuries of fantastic architecture that has withstood the test of a very long time. These are my favorites.

#1 St. Patrick’s Cathedral

With parts of the cathedral dating back to 1220, St. Patrick’s Cathedral is steeped in history and superlatives. It’s the largest cathedral in the country, and everyone from William of Orange to Queen Victoria visited here. Jonathan Swift, who was dean of the church for 30 years in the first half of the 1700s, is buried on the grounds. But its origins reach back even farther, to 450, when Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, baptized people into Christianity on this very site. For many centuries, the cathedral was the island’s largest enclosed space, and it was fairly simple for me to lose myself in the tremendous interior. I walked down the extraordinarily long central aisle along a colorful mosaic floor of various designs that contrasted nicely against the uniform gray of the stonework. A spiral staircase with marble columns, deep transepts with wonderful stained glass, finely carved choir stalls, soaring columns, and three statues of St. Patrick vied for my attention. Countless pointed arches, designed to draw the eye upward toward God, bore a touch of irony—the archbishop largely responsible for the construction of this cathedral went blind before its completion and never got to see his final product. I like to think the man upstairs compensated him with centuries of worshippers and visitors who have enjoyed this visual feast that he provided.

#2 Christ Church Cathedral

Set in the heart of the ancient Viking city, Christ Church Cathedral dates back to the 1180s, making it Dublin’s oldest edifice. From the outside, this beautiful building is undeniably medieval: somewhat austere and somber, with sturdy buttresses but no statuary or enormous windows; very masculine; very solid. Given that, I was rather taken aback when I entered and was greeted by an unexpected airiness and lightness. Graceful stained-glass lancet windows allowed in a flood of light that supplemented the simple hanging lanterns. Elaborately sculpted choir stalls, a delicate choir screen, a highly ornamented pulpit, a colorful mosaic floor of intriguing patterns, a ribbed vault ceiling, wide arches, and magnificent embroidered altar frontals exuded an ancient holiness. But to get an even better feel for what this place was like 1,000 years ago, I headed underneath it all to the oldest part of the cathedral—a fascinating crypt, the largest in all the British Isles, that stretches under the building’s entire length and width and has enough room for a café where you can enjoy a wee bit of Irish tea and tremendous volumes of Irish history among the stone arches, low ceiling, and monuments.

#3 Sunlight Chambers

This corner building along the River Liffey was completed in 1910 in the Italianate style, an anomaly among its Georgian and Victorian neighbors. The commercial office was constructed as the Irish headquarters for Lever Brothers, a British manufacturing company that teamed up with a chemist to create a soap that used glycerin and vegetable oils instead of tallow, the result of which was a soap that was free-lathering. Christened “Sunlight Soap,” it leant its name to this structure. The peach façade features arched windows, elaborate wooden carvings depicting the elements sheltered under overhanging eaves, and a red terracotta roof. But the real delight for me is the ornate frieze that belts around the building’s three sides. Set in 12 panels above the first and second stories, intricately molded glazed terracotta figures in white, yellow, blue, and green depict the history of hygiene and soap—men making clothes dirty while they’re at work in agriculture and industry (extracting and producing the ingredients for Lever Brothers products), and women washing them in streams, carefully placing them in baskets and trunks. While this wonderful ornamentation served as a terrific 20th-century advertisement for Lever Brothers, today the frieze is a treat for anyone who looks up at this bit of whimsy in Dublin’s popular Temple Bar neighborhood.

#4 Powerscourt House

It was built as a townhouse over the course of three years, from 1771 to 1774, but mansion is a more apt noun for this huge structure. Constructed for Richard Wingfield, a member of the Irish House of Lords, so that he and his family could stay in Dublin when visiting from their fantastic estate in Enniskerry, the Wingfields stayed here for just over a quarter of century, until the Parliament of Ireland was disbanded and Wingfield sold the property. This Palladian palace, on a narrow street that makes it seem even larger, was designed to impress members of society while Parliament was in session. Lavish parties were conducted in the striking setting, along the mahogany staircase and in the rococo-style hallway and landing and the neo-classical music room and ballroom. The three-story house with ashlar granite walls features a pedimented central breakfront, a tripartite Venetian window framed by Corinthian columns, limestone quoins, a bull’s-eye window in the pediment, and a gorgeous curved granite staircase flanked by cast-iron balustrades on granite plinths with carved granite handrails. If you want to get a taste of what the good life was like so long ago, you’re free to step inside—the house has been the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, a shopping destination, since 1981.

#5 Old Library, Trinity College

Founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592, Trinity College has expanded over the years, its campus now a combination of beautiful old buildings and progressively more banal modern architecture that’s best to ignore (although you may want to pop in to the hideous Arts and Social Science Building to watch The Dublin Experience, an informative audiovisual presentation of the city’s history). The Old Library, completed in 1732 after 20 years of construction, is a massive building that is one of the college’s best. Ireland’s largest library rises three stories in the Georgian style and is topped with a balustrade that runs its entire length. As impressive as that is, I really wanted to see the inside, especially the Long Room, the longest in Ireland, at a stunning 213’. This gorgeous room has a fantastic wooden barrel ceiling above its two stories of space that houses a 15th-century oak and willow harp, busts of the likes of Jonathan Swift and Mary Wollstonecraft, and 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, stacked ceiling to floor. One of those tomes is the Book of Kells, kept under glass in a darkened space. The large-format illustrated manuscript of the four Gospels, in Latin, dates back to about 800. Every day, a page is turned for visitors to see. The amazingly detailed and glorious illustrations easily attest to the astounding skills and talents of the monks who created it. It’s a spectacular work of art, kept in an amazing room, inside one of Dublin’s best buildings.

Five Runners-Up

• St. Michan’s Church (1685)
• Former Allied Irish Bank (1893)
• General Post Office (1818)
• Custom House (1791)
• Ulster Bank (1891)

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