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At the opposite end of Merrion Square, at no. 29 Lower Fitzwilliam St , is what's billed as a "faithfully recreated Georgian family home" (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; GBP2.50/?3.17). Recreated is the word - the house fell down and has been rebuilt, brick by brick, by the Electricity Supply Board, whose offices adjoin it at the back. Considering that since the Board was responsible, in the 1960s, for knocking down 26 Georgian houses and destroying the longest unbroken row of period houses then surviving, this act of homage is perhaps the least that could be demanded of it. If you want a postmodern take on the Georgian, this is it, furnished in a notional style of between 1790 and 1820. Viewing the house is an extraordinary experience, there's little feeling that you'd have anything in common with the people who once lived here: rather you're left with the impression that they "only drank wine and beer" and that the women "did nothing but write letters to themselves". Georgian life is turned into a cabinet of curiosities, a weird kind of sideshow which does, admittedly, have its fascination. For an idea of "real" eighteenth-century Dublin life, Newman House is far superior ; but if you have a taste for kitsch and can overlook the obvious irony, then you may find some pleasure at no. 29. Fitzwilliam Square , south of Merrion Square along Fitzwilliam Street, is another elegant example of a late Georgian square - it was built between 1791 and 1825 - with some of the city's finest Georgian doors and fanlights. The dwindling number of residents still hold keys to the central garden.
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