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Christchurch (daily 10am-5pm; GBP2/2.54 donation suggested) stands isolated by the traffic system. Like St Patrick's, it suffered at the hands of Victorian restorers, but is still very much a resonant historic site. Dublin's first (wooden) cathedral was founded here by Sitric Silkenbeard, first Christian king of the Dublin Norsemen, in 1038; that church was demolished by the Norman Richard de Clare - Strongbow - who built the new stone cathedral in 1172. This building didn't fare very well, either: it was built on inadequate foundations on a peat bog, and the south wall fell down in 1562. The building you see now is the result of an 1870s restoration; even the purely ornamental flying buttresses are a figment of the imagination of its architect, G.E. Street. Despite all this, the building remains a monument to that first serious British incursion into Ireland in the twelfth century. Strongbow himself is interred here (or part of him), underneath an effigy which quite possibly depicts an Earl of Drogheda. Like many of Dublin's larger monuments, Christchurch keeps drawing in the crowds with multimedia evocations of history. Styling itself as "a bridge to the medieval past", Dublinia (Feb & March Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm; April-Sept daily 10am-5pm; last admission one hour before closing; tel 679 4611, www.dublinia.ie ; GBP3.95/5.00, includes admission to Christchurch), offers a series of presentations of medieval Dublin, including Strongbow's arrival, a full-size reconstruction of a merchant's house and a grotesque depiction of the Black Death. The Viking and Norman artefacts dug up at nearby Wood Quay are also on display here. Close by, the augustly monumental St Audoen's Church (entry is on Sunday mornings), the oldest of Dublin's parish churches, was founded by the Normans. Today, it's a strange hybrid: the original one, part of which dates from the twelfth century, is now a Protestant church which is grafted on to a much larger, nineteenth-century, Catholic structure. The arch beside it, dating back to 1215, is the only surviving gate from the old city walls. Not all is as old as it seems hereabouts; for all its air of authenticity, the pub, Mother Redcap's (a little further west on Back Lane, off High Street), is a modern creation amid the open spaces left by the clearance of the inner-city slums. Nearby, however, the Tailors' Guild Hall (1706) is the city's last surviving guildhall, with an assembly room that includes an eighteenth-century musicians' gallery where Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy spoke to the revolutionary "Back Lane Parliament" in the run-up to the 1798 Rebellion. Tailors' Hall is now the headquarters of An Taisce (pronounced On Tashka ) a pioneering conservation organization which has done much to raise awareness of the city's need to preserve its rich architectural heritage.
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