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Dublin Castle (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 2-5pm, tours every 15min; www.historic-centres.com ; GBP3/?3.81) is just a short walk along Dame Street. Once inside the castle precinct, you're confronted with a real pig's ear of architectural styles: an ugly modern tax office stands to your left, an over-precise Gothic fantasy of a church of 1803 adorns the ridge straight ahead, and to your right is the worn red brick of the castle itself. The castle dates from King John's first Dublin court of 1207, so it's a surprise to find that today it has the appearance of a graceful eighteenth-century building, with only the massive stone Record Tower giving the game away - although, in the nineteenth century, this too was heavily rebuilt. Originally there were four such towers - the base of the Bermingham Tower, to the southwest, also survives - but the castle later became more of an administrative than a military centre. After the Act of Union at the beginning of the nineteenth century the castle continued as the Viceroy's seat, and as the heart of British rule, the place stands as a symbol of seven hundred years of British power in Ireland. Sometimes the intended symbolism is subverted by Dublin humour: the figure of Justice that stands at the top of the Bedford Tower , on the northside of the yard, turns her back to the city, illustrating, it was said, just how much justice Dubliners could expect from the English. Furthermore, the scales she holds used to tilt when it rained; to ensure even-handedness, the problem was solved by drilling holes in the scale-pans. The castle hosted the European Parliament in 1990, and massive amounts of EU funds were spent on refurbishing it in honour of the occasion. The State Apartments are now used by the president to entertain foreign dignitaries (so at times they will be closed to visitors). It's these, including the State Drawing Room and the Throne Room , that you'll see on the official tour. The grandeur of the furnishings takes a bit of adjusting to; for instance, all the rooms have Donegal hand-tufted carpets mirroring the eighteenth-century stucco-work, which although superb examples of craftsmanship really are quite overpowering. This opulence must always have been in stark contrast to the surrounding reality of the city: the high wall that you'll notice at the end of the castle's garden is said to have been built to shield the delicate sensibilities of Queen Victoria from the appalling condition of the slums on St Stephen Street. Excavations for the new conference centre built in 1990 revealed perhaps the most interesting part of the tour, the Undercroft . Here you can see remains of an earlier Viking fort, part of the original thirteenth-century moat plus the base of the Powder Tower, a section of the old city wall and the steps that used to lead down to the Liffey. It's unfortunate that similar care for the city's past was not practised two blocks north of the castle on Wood Quay , the site of Viking and Norman settlements that yielded amazing quantities of archeological finds (on show in the National Museum Annexe). The excavations were never completed and there's undoubtedly more to be discovered on the site, but despite a lot of argument the corporation of Dublin was able to go ahead and put up two massive Civic Offices, known to one and all as "The Bunkers", destroying what may have been the most important early Viking archeological site in Europe. The castle is also home to the Chester Beatty Library and Gallery (May-Sept Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; Oct-April Tues-Fri 10am-5pm; www.cbl.ie ; free), created by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, an Irish-American mining magnate who settled in Dublin in 1950 and gave his remarkable collection of oriental art to the nation. Its superbly crafted objets d'art range from Chinese rhino-horn cups to life-size Burmese Buddhas, while the manuscripts include the oldest surviving examples of Egyptian love poetry. In front of the castle on Lord Edward Street is City Hall (Mon-Sat 10am-5.15pm, Sun 2-5pm), one of the finest examples of late Georgian architecture in the city. Built between 1769 and 1779 as a financial centre, the building's sumptuous interior reflects the power and prestige felt by eighteenth-century Dublin's merchant class. One of the most striking features of the building is the exquisite plasterwork by stuccodore Charles Thorpe which decorates the gently lit dome above the building's rotunda. To the right of the entrance is an eighteen-foot-high statue of Daniel O'Connell, created by John Hogan in 1843, where "the Liberator" is represented in the classical oratorical pose he may have adopted in 1800 when he made his first public speech in this building.
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