Start this walk in the north of the city, on Eccles Street. In Ulysses, Leopold and Molly Bloom lived at No. 7 Eccles Street. That house has since been knocked down, though the front door is preserved at the James Joyce Cultural Centre (see Walk 3). Opposite what would have been No. 7, however, is another typical Georgian style house (No. 78), which now has a plaque saying ‘Bloom House’ in honour of the novel. This is where a large crowd usually gathers at the starting point of the annual Bloomsday celebrations.

Walk back to the eastern end of Eccles Street and turn right on to Dorset Street. Continue straight down, taking the left fork at the bottom on to Capel Street, then the first right on to Little Britain Street. In Chapter 12, Bloom stops for a drink in Barney Kiernan’s pub and has various conversations with other customers, generally heated, about a number of topics, including capital punishment, nationalism, the nature of being Jewish, and even the wonders of Guinness. In the original concept of the book the chapter was called ‘Cyclops’ (Joyce later abandoned giving each chapter names relating to the Odyssey, feeling that it was a little over-stylized), which refers to the narrow-mindedness of the publican (Cyclops was the one-eyed monster in Homer’s work).

Return to Capel Street, turn right and walk down to the junction with Abbey Street Upper and then turn right on to Meetinghouse Lane. Chapter 10 of the novel, originally called ‘Wandering Rocks’, is a disjointed piece of snapshots of various characters around Dublin. Here, characters named Ned Lambert and J. J. O’Molloy (also one of the customers in discussion in Barney Kiernan’s) meet the reverend of St Mary’s Abbey and they discuss the history of the building. Founded in 1139 as a Benedictine monastery, only one room now remains, but it is a beautiful example of medieval architecture with a beamed vaulted ceiling.

Turn back on yourself and walk down Abbey Street Upper until it meets Abbey Street Middle. The Freeman newspaper offices, which feature in Chapter 7, located in Abbey Street Middle, are in fact the offices of the building now empty but once occupied by the Irish Independent newspaper. Bloom’s profession is advertising and he visits the newspaper offices to discuss the printing of a new advertisement for one of his clients. The literary style of the chapter reflects its subject matter, being broken up after every paragraph with a new ‘headline’. The Oval pub, which stands a little further down the street, also features in this chapter.

Turn left on to O’Connell Street and walk north one block towards the Spire. Joyce’s description of the goings on at the General Post Office at the start of Chapter 7 are wonderfully evocative of the frenetic pace of the city’s main postal depot as well as the transport hub that was O’Connell Street (and still is today). The unmistakable silver ‘Spire’ that now towers over O’Connell Street is a replacement for the Nelson Pillar mentioned in the novel, which was sadly destroyed by the IRA in the 1960s.

Walk back down O’Connell Street towards the river, over O’Connell Bridge, and take the right fork along Westmoreland Street to College Green. Bloom walks past Trinity College in Chapter 8 on his way to Davy Byrnes and doesn’t have many complimentary things to say about the ‘surly front’ of the building. This may well be because Joyce, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not study at Trinity but instead at University College Dublin.

Continue down Grafton Street, turn left into Nassau Street and walk to the corner of Nassau and Kildare Street, home of the National Library. Stephen Dedalus has a heated debate in the National Library about Shakespeare, generally analyzing the play Hamlet and the relevance of Shakespeare’s wife Ann Hathaway to the playwright’s work. Stephen, who features in Joyce’s earlier works, is a poet who takes his literary aspirations very seriously. Bloom also appears at the library in search of a particular book.

Return back up Nassau Street and turn left on to Dawson Street and then right on to Duke Street. No. 21 Duke Street is Davy Byrnes pub, where Bloom has lunch in Chapter 8 and muses about the nature and variations of food. On Bloomsday the pub is extremely crowded with Joyce fans enjoying the same meal as Bloom – a cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine. Joyce himself was a regular at the pub, which also features in one of the stories in Dubliners.

Walk to the end of Duke Street and turn left on to Grafton Street. The opticians that Bloom window-shops at in Chapter 8, before lunching at Davy Byrnes, was Yeates & Son on Grafton Street, which is no longer there. The greengrocer Thornton’s, mentioned at the start of Chapter 10, was also on Grafton Street.