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If you get off the bus (#21A, #78, #78B, #79 and #90) where James' Street joins Bow Lane, you'll walk past Swift's Hospital, now known as St Patrick's, on your way to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (just five minutes' walk further west). The hospital was extensively and well restored between 1980 and 1984, and the result is that Ireland's first Classical building - its date is 1680 - is a joy to look at, from the outside at least. The name doesn't imply a medical institution of any kind: it was built as a home for wounded army pensioners, like Chelsea Hospital in London or Les Invalides in Paris. The plan is simple: a colonnaded building around a central courtyard, erected with cool restraint so that the sober stone arcading creates a lovely, unadorned rhythm. Initially the use of the hospital to house the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Tues-Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun noon-5.30pm; free), which opened in 1991, caused a great deal of controversy. This was not least because its inside was depersonalized and painted white to provide gallery space of the correct, "modern" kind of conversion, which led one commentator to quote the Flann O'Brien story about a man born at the age of 25 with a consciousness but no history. As the gallery evolved, acquiring a permanent collection and thus a character and "history" of its own, most of the criticism dissipated and the former hospital has proved to be a very successful and popular exhibition space. There are no permanent exhibitions in the museum (consult In Dublin for current exhibitions), which so far owns few works of its own, but instead has a regularly changing collection of works mainly borrowed from European collections that hang alongside Irish ones. In the basement under the north wing is an excellent restaurant.
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