Ireland · Old Town
Dublin
A self-guided walking tour of the Dublin Old Town, every street in two days.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Dublin is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 43.0 km
- Time
- about 12.5 hours
- Streets
- 185
- Steps
- 10 streets with steps
- Start point
- Dublin Castle
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Dublin Castle 1,500 points
Go in. The yards inside are open ground and the route runs through them: Upper Castle Yard, the Lower Yard, the steps at the side. Most visitors photograph it from outside and carry on. I would rather have the paving.
General Post Office 500 points
Big pillars on O'Connell Street, and behind them a post office that is still working. Go through the doors: the public hall is open to anyone buying a stamp and to anyone who just wants a look. Before you go in, cross the street and look up at the top of it. I am not telling you at what.
Ha'penny Bridge 500 points
Cast iron, painted white, and about wide enough for two strangers to disagree politely. Stand in the middle for a moment: the quays run off in both directions, both banks of the river at once. Then move along, because standing about is not eating.
Hugh Lane Gallery 500 points
A grey Georgian front on the north side of Parnell Square that gives away nothing at all from the footpath. It costs nothing to walk in. Go up the stairs and look at the ceilings on your way past.
Saint Mary's Cathedral 500 points
It sits on Marlborough Street with barely room to step back and take it in. Cross to the far pavement and try anyway. The portico is asking for a much wider approach than the one it ended up with.
Butt Bridge 250 points
The plain one, hard up against the railway girders. Everybody grumbles that the ironwork beside it ruins the view east, and everybody uses it anyway. Flat, wide, quick. I have a lot of time for a thing that simply works.
Campanile 250 points
The college leaves its gates open, and the ground underfoot changes the moment you are inside: setts, then gravel, then grass. That alone is worth the detour. Walk under the middle of it and keep looking up.
George's Street Arcade 250 points
One way in on each side of the block, and the quickest line between them goes indoors. Old books, records, a hat stall, and the smell of coffee about halfway along. I count the floor tiles every single time.
Gloucester Diamond 250 points
Four short terraces meeting at an angle, well away from anywhere selling anything. This is the quiet end of the route and the reason it reaches so far east. Stand in the middle of it and turn slowly around. Nobody will mind.
Wolfe Tone Square 250 points
A flat rectangle of grass behind the shopping streets, with benches, shade and pigeons who have seen it all. Sit down for ten minutes. Then get up, because the lanes around it are the good part and they do not walk themselves.
Eating
Actual food.
Dublin never claimed a grand kitchen and does not have one. What it has is a pot left on the hob, a bay full of shellfish, and a long habit of taking in whoever arrives and then eating what they cook. The oldest dish here is whatever a small kitchen could leave simmering all afternoon. The newest was put together in a takeaway around 2006 and is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both of them count.
Meat and fish
Dublin coddle
Sausages, bacon and onions left to get on with it in their own liquid, potatoes going soft on top. Nothing is browned and nobody apologises for that. Dubliners will defend it against all comers, and other counties refuse to touch it, which tells you it is properly local.
Sources: European Journal of Food
Cockles and mussels
The song is not a joke. Women walked out on the strand at low tide and picked these by hand, and in the hungry years widows and their children lived on cockles boiled with a little oatmeal. Order the mussels. If cockles are on the card, order those instead.
Sources: Food Smart Dublin
Spice bag
Chips, fried chicken, onions, peppers and chilli tossed together in a bag with spice, curry sauce on the side for dipping. A Dublin takeaway called the Sunflower put it together around 2006. In 2025 the Oxford English Dictionary wrote it down. Nineteen years from off the menu to in the dictionary is a good run.
Sources: RTE News, Irish Examiner, The Journal
Vegetarian
Colcannon
Mashed potato with curly kale or cabbage through it. On Halloween a coin, a stick or a rag went into the pot and whatever turned up in your helping told you how the year would go. Halloween is Irish. This was its supper. Chew slowly.
Sources: European Journal of Food, RTE Brainstorm
Bairin breac
A speckled loaf, which is exactly what the Irish name says, heavy with dried fruit and cut in slices with butter on. Find the ring in your piece and you are married within the year. No pressure. It is sold as barmbrack and it is best a day old.
Sources: European Journal of Food, RTE Brainstorm
Brown soda bread
Dense, dark, a cross cut in the top, and it lands beside every bowl of soup in this city. Everyone will tell you it is ancient. Baking soda is Victorian, and the scholarship puts it politely: the real history is more complicated than the tourist leaflet. Eat it anyway, with plenty of butter.
Vegan
Two, and the reason is dairy. The old plate here was potatoes and oatmeal, and butter or milk went on top of very nearly all of it. What stands up on its own came off the shore instead, gathered by people who never once thought of it as a diet. Modern Dublin is a completely different city and will feed you extremely well. This band is about the old food.
Samphire
A shore plant that grows where the salt water reaches, green and crunchy and already salted by the tide. Irish households were pickling it in the 1690s and the recipes survive in two family manuscripts. It usually arrives beside fish. Ask for it on its own.
Sources: Food Smart Dublin
Dillisk
Dried purple seaweed, eaten straight out of the bag like crisps or thrown into a soup. Salty, a little smoky, tastes of the sea and somehow not of fish. Ireland has been eating this for a very long time and has only lately started admitting that it likes it.
Sources: Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, Food Smart Dublin
Late breakfast
Bread 41 come for the one thing: the almond croissant
41 Pearse Street
Pearse Street, a few minutes east of Trinity. An organic bakery doing slow sourdough and pastries that sell fast. The queue round the corner in the morning is office workers grabbing a croissant before work. Take the almond one. If the line is long, join it. Pastry that sells this fast is worth ten minutes of anyone's morning.
- Mon07:00–15:00
- Tue07:00–15:00
- Wed07:00–15:00
- Thu07:00–15:00
- Fri07:00–15:00
- Sat07:00–15:00
- Sun07:00–15:00
Mornings to early afternoon only. It shuts at three, every day.
Sources: Georgina Campbell Guides, The Irish Times, RTÉ
Two Pups where locals go
74 Francis Street
Francis Street, in the Liberties, a short walk west of the Castle. A brunch room with nooks and corners everywhere, made for sitting over one coffee for as long as you like. The specials change often. The avocado on toast stays put, and I understand that. Staying put is my whole job.
- Mon08:00–15:30
- Tue08:00–15:30
- Wed08:00–15:30
- Thu08:00–15:30
- Fri08:00–15:30
- Sat09:00–15:30
- Sun09:00–15:30
Daytime only. It closes at half past three, every day of the week.
Sources: European Coffee Trip, RTÉ
Afternoon coffee
Clement & Pekoe come for the one thing: the loose leaf tea
50 William Street South
South William Street, behind an arched window raised a few steps above the lane. Come for the tea: loose leaf, in a country that loves tea and mostly lets a bag make it. The coffee is taken just as seriously, with filter ground to order. Sit in the window and watch the street go by. Watching people go by is most of my life, so I approve.
- Mon08:30–17:00
- Tue08:30–17:00
- Wed08:30–17:00
- Thu08:30–17:00
- Fri08:30–17:00
- Sat09:00–17:00
- Sun11:00–17:00
Sources: European Coffee Trip, Fresh Cup
Two Boys Brew where locals go
375 North Circular Road
North Circular Road in Phibsborough, a proper neighbourhood a good walk north of the river. A long shared table under a skylight hung with plants, and a changing cast of guest roasters on filter. All day the seats fill with couples, young families and students on laptops. Nobody in here is sightseeing. They came for the cup, and the cup keeps changing its roaster.
- Mon07:30–15:30
- Tue07:30–15:30
- Wed07:30–15:30
- Thu07:30–15:30
- Fri07:30–15:30
- Sat09:00–16:00
- Sun09:00–16:00
It closes in the afternoon: half past three on weekdays, four at the weekend.
Dinner
Cornucopia the old one
19-20 Wicklow Street
Forty years of feeding this city without a scrap of meat, and it is still the same family. Downstairs is a counter and a tray. Take the stairs. There are two floors of old dining rooms above, and that is where the regulars sit. Big plates, small prices, no booking, no fuss.
- Mon08:00–19:30
- Tue08:00–19:30
- Wed08:00–19:30
- Thu08:00–20:30
- Fri08:00–20:30
- Sat08:00–20:30
- Sun09:00–19:30
Open every day, but it shuts early: half seven most nights, half eight Thursday to Saturday. Go before that and take your time.
Sources: The Irish Times, The Journal, Totally Dublin
Lee's Charming Noodles come for the one thing: the hand pulled noodles
105 Parnell Street
Parnell Street, north of the river. Come for two things: noodles pulled by hand and dumplings made in the house. On Sundays and Mondays the room fills with cooks and waiters from other restaurants on their day off, and people who cook all week know where to eat. The bowls are close to impossible to finish. Try anyway.
- Mon12:00–21:00
- Tue12:00–21:00
- Wed12:00–21:00
- Thu12:00–21:00
- Fri12:00–21:00
- Sat12:00–21:00
- Sun12:00–21:00
Sunday and Monday are the packed days. Go early on those.
Sources: Irish Examiner, All The Food, RTÉ
Terra Madre where locals go
13A Bachelors Walk
Bachelor's Walk, a few steps down from the quay, behind a sign so small that most people walk straight past it. A basement with about nine tables, chairs that do not match, and a short menu printed on a sheet of paper that changes often. Slow Italian cooking, pasta and stews, with bread on the side for the sauce. It has been hiding in plain sight for over a decade. Keep the last piece of bread for the sauce. That is the one job the bread came to do.
Nine tables and a phone that is hard to get through on. Go early in the evening, or try your luck at the door.
Sources: Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, Totally Dublin, RTÉ
Checked 14 September 2026.
Name origin
Why it is called Dublin.
Two names for one place, both chewed down from something older. Áth Cliath is the ford of hurdles: a shallow bit of the Liffey that somebody strengthened with sticks and boards woven together, with baile, a town, stuck on the front of it later. Dublin is the other name. Duibhlinn, from dubh and linn, the black pool: a deep spot in the river just east of the ford where a boat could tie up. Irish kept the ford. English kept the pool. I would have kept both.
Sources: www.logainm.ie; www.dublincity.ie
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Two things made this spot: somewhere to get across, and somewhere to stop. The ford was the most easterly place you could wade the Liffey, so it was the hinge between the country north of the water and the country south of it. A little further down, the river ran deep enough to moor a ship, and that pool sat roughly where Parliament Street runs today. Cross here, land here. Both banks of this walk grew out of those two sentences, and I have been eating the result ever since.
Sources: www.logainm.ie; www.dublincity.ie
Why then
When the first stone went down.
841. That is the year the annals put a longphort at Duiblinn: a ship camp hauled up on the bank, meant to last one season. It did not last one season. The trading port that grew out of it was known well enough abroad that when new owners turned up in 1170 it never occurred to them to rename the place. Most towns begin when somebody decides to stay. This one began when somebody decided not to leave yet.
Sources: www.logainm.ie
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 841-1170
The Norse. They came for somewhere to keep their ships and stayed for the money. Within a hundred years the pool had lent its name to the whole port, and other languages took that name and ran with it: a Welsh writer of the tenth century calls the place Dulyn. The Irish went on naming it after the ford instead. Two names, two opinions, one set of lanes underneath.
Sources: www.logainm.ie
- 1171-1922
The crown, from a long way off. Henry II wintered here and at Christmas 1171 handed the town to his men of Bristol, with permission to come and live in it. The parchment saying so measures 121 by 165 millimetres, is the oldest document this city owns, and still sits in a strongroom on Pearse Street, which you walk down on this route. Eight hundred years of decisions about this place, and the first one is smaller than a dinner plate.
Sources: www.dublincity.ie; www.dublincity.ie
- 1922-
Ireland. From September 1922 the parliament has met in this city, and when the present constitution was written the point was put in plain language: the Houses of the Oireachtas shall sit in or near the City of Dublin. After eight centuries of instructions arriving by boat, that one sentence is doing a great deal of quiet work.
Sources: www.oireachtas.ie; www.irishstatutebook.ie
The emblem
What the shield means.
This is not the city's shield. Dublin's own arms carry three castles and a motto about obedient citizens, and three of anything at icon size is a grey blob. So the icon is a harp. Ireland is the only country on earth that signs itself with a musical instrument: gold, silver strings, blue behind it. Every official version of that harp is drawn from one fourteenth-century instrument, and that instrument is kept in Trinity College, which this walk goes straight through. The emblem of an entire state, sitting two minutes off your route.
Sources: www.dublincity.ie; enterprise.gov.ie
Emblem: Original artwork for Cobble Gobble — no third-party source
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
Look at the map. Most of it is a medieval tangle, and then a few lines run dead straight through the middle of it. Those are one committee. From 1757 the Commissioners for Making Wide and Convenient Ways could buy a house, take it down and lay a road through the hole. Parliament Street, Westmoreland Street, the widening of Dame Street and the bridge at the bottom of O'Connell Street are all their doing. They stopped work in 1851. Ninety-four years is a long time to spend straightening one dinner.
Sources: www.dublincity.ie
Halfway down Fishamble Street there is an archway in a wall and almost nothing behind it. There used to be a music hall back there, seating seven hundred, and six months after it opened, Handel's Messiah was performed for the first time anywhere on that spot. The hall went to an engineering works in 1868 and then went altogether. The arch is still in the wall, on a lane most visitors use as a short cut.
Sources: www.buildingsofireland.ie
The oldest thing still standing inside the college is a long red brick range that everybody calls the Rubrics, which is what happens to the words 'red bricks' after three hundred years in Dublin mouths. It went up around 1700 and it closes two of the squares you cross on this walk. The curly gables and the tall chimneys look like the oldest part of it and are the youngest: they came in 1894, along with an extra floor.
Sources: www.buildingsofireland.ie
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Quay
- The built edge of the river, and the reason both banks run so straight. Aston Quay, Burgh Quay, Eden Quay, Essex Quay, George's Quay, Wellington Quay, Crampton Quay, Custom House Quay. Eight on this walk, and every one of them was a place to unload something.
- Lane
- The width I like best. Cow's Lane, Crane Lane, Adair Lane, Byrnes Lane, Sampsons Lane, Price's Lane, Bedford Lane. People's names, mostly, and the people are long gone.
- Court
- A yard you enter through a gap in a terrace and leave the same way. Crampton Court, Harbour Court, Rutland Court, Strongs Court. Go in expecting a street and get a room instead.
- Place
- A short stub off a longer street, usually a dozen doors and then a wall. Sackville Place, Findlater Place, Moland Place, Deverell Place, Bella Place, Terrace Place. Small courses. I eat them between the big ones.
- Lower / Upper
- Nobody here renames a long street. They cut it in pieces and label the pieces. Abbey Street Lower, Middle Abbey Street, Upper Abbey Street; Liffey Street Lower and Upper; Fownes Street Lower and Upper. Lower is the end nearer the water, or nearer the middle of town.
- Abbey
- There was an abbey up on this side once, and it is entirely gone. Abbey Cottages, Abbey Street Lower, Middle Abbey Street, Upper Abbey Street, Old Abbey Street. Five names still pointing at a building nobody alive has seen.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Dublin in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 185streets
- 2,155dots
- 33.5km of street
- 43.0km on foot
- 12.5hours at a stroll
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.