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Henrietta St and Mountjoy Sq. Bus to Parnell Square, then 5-min walk east or west.

Following the initial development of O’Connell Street and the surrounding Georgian terraces in the 18th century, north Dublin became the grandest and most salubrious area of the city. One street that has maintained its character from this time is Henrietta Street, a brief walk west from Parnell Square, which was created by the property magnate Luke Gardiner in 1730 and named after his daughter. For almost a century Henrietta Street was the most desirable address in Dublin: in 1792 four peers, four MPs, two bishops and an archbishop lived there, alongside the Gardiner family, who resided at number 10 until 1854.

After the Act of Union, Dublin’s rich and famous retired to their country seats and this area of the city fell into a sharp decline. The grand houses were bought up and divided into tenement buildings by avaricious entrepreneurs, with as many as 20 apartments in a single house, each occupied by a large, impoverished Irish family. Not surprisingly, disease spread like wild fire through the overcrowded, unheated and unsanitary buildings. As recently as 1975 there were 36 people living at 13 Henrietta Street, and it is only in the last decade or so that the area has begun to emerge from years of poverty and neglect.

East of Parnell Square, Mountjoy Square is an even better preserved relic of the grand days of Georgian north Dublin. Built  between 1792 and 1818 by Lord Mountjoy, the grandson and namesake of Luke Gardiner, the square is formed from four solid edifices facing inwards on to a private garden. Like the rest of Georgian Dublin, Mountjoy Square went through a period of decline and re-emergence, but has survived the experience remarkably intact, with most buildings faithfully restored to their former glory.

Ulysses fans will recognize the square as the place where Leopold Bloom bumps into David Sheehy, MP, a genuine resident of the square in 1904, when the novel is set. Sheehy was the father of the more famous Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, a feminist and suffragette, whose pacifist husband, Francis Skeffington, was killed during the 1916 Easter Rising.

The east side of Mountjoy Square is the most authentic façade, while the west and south sides have been more or less completely rebuilt in the original style. Sean O’Casey lived at number 35 and used it as the setting for his Dublin play The Shadow of a Gunman. Call into the wine merchants at number 25 to see part of an original Georgian interior.

Custom House Quay, T 01 888 2538. Mid Mar-Nov, Mon-Fri 1000-1230, Sat and Sun 1400-1700, Nov-mid Mar, Wed-Fri 1000-1230, Sun 1400-1700. E1. DART Tara St.

Designed by the great James Gandon, and built between 1781 and 1791, the Custom House is constructed in neo-classical style, reminiscent of the architecture of ancient Rome. Inside the building are displays on the architecture of Dublin, the stormy history of the Custom House itself and anecdotes about the various people associated with it, such as the novelist Flann O’Brien, who worked as a civil servant here in the 1940s.

After visiting the exhibition take a walk along Moss Street on the south side of the river to admire in full the building’s beautiful exterior and marvellous skyline. The four figures standing above the pediment are Neptune and Mercury at each end, with Industry and Plenty between them. On top of the dome stands Commerce, surrounded by ornately carved pots that once concealed the building’s chimneys. The Custom House’s copper dome and the columnar drum on which it rests were completely destroyed when the IRA burned the building down in 1921, as one of the final acts of aggression in the Irish War of Independence. It is easy to see that the replacement limestone from County Meath has discoloured at a faster rate than the original Portland stone below it.

On Custom House Quay look out for the striking sculpture by Ronan Gillespie, which commemorates victims of the Great Famine.

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