Dublin’s Georgian architecture is one of it’s most instantly recognisable features

In the 1960s the Financial Times noted, “the only reason why Dublin remained for so long the beautiful eighteenth-century city the English built is that the Irish were too poor to pull it down. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.”

Fitzwilliam Street was once the longest uninterrupted stretch of Georgian housing in the world. This painting shows old houses on the street after they were torn down to make way for the ESB headquarters. Michael Byrne’s painting of ‘Derelict Dublin’ shows the destruction of Fitzwilliam Street in 1967.

Permanent Collection