From the bus stop next to the River Liffey, at the corner of D’Olier Street and Burgh Quay, turn about to face the river and walk north across O’Connell Bridge. On your right, downriver, is the great copper dome of the Custom House, crowned by an allegorical bronze statue of Commerce. On your left, upriver, is the Liffey Bridge, commonly known as Ha’penny Bridge because when it was built in 1816 a halfpenny was charged to walk across it. Ahead of you, at the foot of O’Connell Street on the left, a statue of Daniel O’Connell, ‘the Liberator’ (1775–1847), dominates the proceedings. O’Connell was the first great non-violent agitator against the Union of Britain and Ireland. Though a fiery orator, he advocated peaceful mass protest in place of violent resistance to British rule, and condemned the rebellion of 1803 led by Robert Emmett. Elected to the Irish Parliament in 1828, O’Connell was barred from taking his place as an MP because of his Catholic faith. The mass protests that followed led in 1829 to the Catholic Emancipation Act, allowing the election of Catholics. In 1841 he became the first Catholic mayor of Dublin. In 1844, now almost 70 years old, he was convicted of conspiracy and jailed for a year after calling a huge rally to demand repeal of the Union. Though released after three months, O’Connell became deeply disenchanted at the failure of his life-long campaign of peaceful opposition. A sick man, he left Dublin for sunnier Italy in 1847, but died soon after arriving in Genoa. The foundation stone of the statue was laid in 1864, but the statue itself, designed and begun by John Foley, but completed by his assistant Thomas Brock, was finally unveiled on 15 August 1882.

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Leaving the statue behind, carry on up the left-hand side of O’Connell Street to the corner of Abbey Street Middle. Cross Abbey Street, and just on your right is a statue to a hero of the international trade union movement and the Left in Ireland. James ‘Big Jim’ Larkin (1874–1947) was born of Irish parents in Liverpool and grew up in the city’s slums. A dockworker and trade union activist, he came to Dublin in 1908 to set up the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). In 1913 he led a long and bitter dispute with the Dublin United Tramway Company after its owner tried to break the union by sacking its members. After seven months, the strikers were forced to return to work, but their action became a landmark in the history of organized labour in Ireland. Larkin left for the US, where he became a keen supporter of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was sentenced to five years in jail on trumped-up charges of ‘criminal anarchy’. Deported from the US, he returned to Ireland in 1923 and set up the communist Irish Workers’ League. In 1927 he became the first communist to be elected to the Dáil (lower house of Parliament). He moved away from Soviet-style communism, but he remained a man of the Left until his death in 1947. On the plinth of his statue, erected in 1980, is a quote (in French, Irish and English) from one of his speeches: ‘The great appear great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise.’ The slogan and the sentiment are borrowed from Camille Demoulins, one of the firebrands of the French Revolution.

Continue along the left-hand side of O’Connell Street for one short block. Immediately after crossing Princes Street North, on your left is the grandiose façade of the General Post Office. Look closely, and you can still see the scars left by British bullets and shells during the Easter Rising of 1916. Turn left, through the imposing portico designed by Francis Johnson in 1818 and topped by a statue of Mercury, courier of the gods, into the main hall of the building. A statue of Cúchulainn, the warrior-hero of ancient Irish legends, stands in the main hall, symbolizing the Irish Volunteers who held out for six days here during the ill-fated rising. Their leaders, James Connolly and Padraig Pearse, hoped that direct-armed action would inspire a broader mass insurrection, but Dubliners stayed indoors while British forces shelled the rebels into submission. The nationalists lost 64 dead and killed 130 British troops. The real victims, however, were the people of Dublin: some 300 civilians died in the fighting. Pearse, Connolly and other ringleaders were sentenced to die by firing squad – an act of vengeance that turned them into Republican martyrs.

Turn left out of the Post Office and carry on up O’Connell Street, where a vast obelisk of gleaming steel has been in view since you began this walk. Officially called the Monument of Light (An Tur Solais in Irish), more generally known as the Spire of Dublin and irreverently nicknamed ‘the Spike’, this 390ft (120m) construction shines a striking light in the night sky above the city. Commissioned in 1999 and unveiled in 2002, it stands on the site of the Nelson Pillar, a stone column erected in honour of the famed British admiral and blown up in 1966 by a breakaway Republican group who felt that this hero of the British Empire no longer deserved such a prominent position in the capital of the Irish Republic.

Cross O’Connell Street, leave the Spire on your left, and turn right into Earl Street North. At the corner of this pedestrian street, outside the Café Kylemore, stands a debonair, larger-than-life statue. Bespectacled, hands in pockets, legs crossed and hat at a jaunty angle, this is James Joyce (1882–1941), the author whose work is most closely associated with Dublin. He drew on his native city for inspiration, but left Dublin in 1904, at the age of 22, living in self-imposed exile in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, where he died in 1941. During that time he returned only for a few brief visits. But this has not stopped Dublin making the most of its connection with the great man. Sculpted by Marjorie Fitzgibbon, the statue was erected in 1990.

Carry on up the right-hand side of O’Connell Street for three blocks, crossing Earl Street North, Cathedral Street and Cathal Brugha Street, to the north end of O’Connell Street. In the middle of the crossroads where O’Connell Street meets Parnell Street stands an imposing marble monolith, the Parnell Monument. Nicknamed ‘the uncrowned King of Ireland’ – a soubriquet also applied to Daniel O’Connell 30 years earlier – Charles Stuart Parnell (1846–91) ranks alongside O’Connell as one of the titans of Ireland’s struggle for Home Rule. Through his political agitation and demands for land reform, Parnell built a strong movement for home rule for Ireland, but his fragile political alliance with the Liberal government of William Gladstone was damaged by the murder of the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, Fredrick Cavendish, by the extremist ‘Invincibles’, and in 1890 his credibility with his own party was destroyed by the revelation of his affair with a married woman, Katharine O’Shea, when her husband cited him as co-respondent in their divorce. Parnell died the following year, after marrying Katharine. He was only 45. Buses 40B, and 120 stop on Parnell Street and buses 4, 7, 7D and 8 stop on O’Connell Street near the junction with Parnell Street and the Parnell Monument.

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