Best history/culture tour of Dublin?

gaiscioch

For years I would have said the old reliables of Glasnevin Cemetary or Kilmainham Gaol. The house on Henrietta Street is a great social history, too, and of course Croke Park and Epic are very professional, sleak operations. But I've seen them all and I'm looking for new ones.

I think my new favourite is the little-known Secret Street Tours (https://www.secretstreettours.org/). It has everything, and I can't imagine there being a more real tour of the city. Our guide was a man from West Cork who slept rough on the streets of Dublin for seven years and he recounted in detail nights and events, from the bus he got to the hostel on his first night without a home, while walking us around the north inner city explaining the difference between the various homeless shelters he stopped outside.

It was very raw. He talked about all his failures in trying to get off drugs, and what happened to finally get him through. He talked about the difference in the detox places and how he finally got a detox place in the Phoenix Park which worked for him. It was really moving stuff. The little kindnesses shown by strangers along the way which made him want to change. He spoke about how he's now living in an apartment overlooking the park in which he slept rough for years, and how he has learnt to read properly in the past few years and is doing something like the equivalent of the Junior Cycle now. Amid the humility which defined the tour, you could really feel his pride at this. One of the craziest things was that he was the happiest person I have seen in a long time. No anger, just acceptance of this is the way it is and plenty of deadpan humour and happiness (if that's the right word) that he had survived. There was a great humility there, out of the rat race and bullshít so many of us get caught up in. I don't think I've ever left a tour thinking about issues far deeper than the facts of the tour. He finished off the tour at a plaque on Church Street noting that on that spot in 1913 seven people - including a 3-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old - had died when a slum collapsed.

What tour of Dublin have you done which has left an impression on you?

I am not sure if they still do it but the Sinn Fein walking tour of rebel Dublin from their office on Parnell Street was excellent. Did it a couple of times with foreign visitors a few years back.

Its not for the faint hearted mind, the guide said he believed in physical force republicanism the last time I went on it.