Stand on the north side of Merrion Square, about face, and walk to the corner of Merrion Square West. Cross the street, turn left and immediately to your right enter the National Gallery through a triple-columned 19th-century portico. This is a world-class gallery, with more than 500 works of art in its collection. For a fast visit, turn left on entering, into the Shaw Room. The eminent playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) left much of his estate to the gallery, and this room is a showcase for portraits of the great and the good of Dublin and Ireland, from the Elizabethan period to the early 20th century. From the Shaw Room, carry on to the Yeats Museum, with its collection of portraits by John Butler Yeats and landscapes by his son Jack B. Yeats, (brother of the more famous W. B.). The central aisle of the ground floor comprises the Irish gallery. On the first floor, French, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish and German Renaissance painters are on show. Pride of place goes to Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ. Painted in 1602, this splendid painting vanished for several centuries until its rediscovery in Dublin’s Jesuit House of Study in 1990. 

Leave the gallery, turn left, return to the corner, turn left again and walk three blocks – first along Clare Street, then, after passing Clare Lane and Leinster Lane on your left, along Leinster Street South – to the corner of Kildare Street. Immediately after you turn the corner, Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Ireland and the Office of the Chief Herald is on your left. Its red brick, faux-Venetian façade makes it conspicuous.

 If your name is Timothy, Mick or Pat, or if you think there’s even a hint of Irish in your ancestry, this is the place to come to track down your forebears. For around five centuries, Ireland has sent millions of its sons and daughters overseas, to England, Scotland, mainland Europe, the Americas and Australia. The ‘Wild Geese’ – exiled Catholic aristocrats and their followers – fought in the armies of France and Spain against England in the 17th and 18th centuries. One descendant of an Irish émigré, Marichal Macmahon, went on to become a president of France; another Irish soldier of fortune, Bernardo O’Higgins, is celebrated to this day as the Libertador (Liberator) and first president of the Chilean Republic; Australia still has a soft spot for Ned Kelly, the greatest bushranger of them all; and two US presidents in the second half of the 20th century share Irish bloodlines. So if you have a trace of Ireland in your DNA, you’re in interesting and varied company. The Genealogical Office staff are available (for a small fee) to help you on your way down memory lane, but do as much homework as you can before you arrive. You can download a preparatory questionnaire from their website. Genealogical Office; www.nli.ie

Exit to Kildare Street, turn left, and walk only a few yards down the street to the entrance of the National Library of Ireland, next to the Heraldic Museum. Turn left to enter. Founded in 1890, the library’s exhibits include manuscripts by Irish literary greats including George Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats, photographs and a hand-written copy of one of the earliest written works about Ireland, Giraldus Cambrensis’s Topographia Hiberniae (Topography of Ireland), dating from the 13th century. 

Back on Kildare Street, turn left and after a few steps enter the wrought-iron gates of the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology and History. This is the National Museum’s archaeology collection. The archaeology collection spans more than 9,000 years of Ireland’s history, and you should aim to spend at least an hour here. The most immediately impressive exhibits are the intricate gold and relics of the ancient Celtic world in the ‘Or – Ireland’s Gold’ section, which is one of the largest collections of gold ornaments from prehistory anywhere in Europe. The craftsmanship of the amulets, collars, torcs and bracelets shown here is as fine as anything from the world of ancient Greece or the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. The finest individual exhibits include the famous gold and silver Tara Brooch, set with amber and emeralds, and early medieval Christian artefacts such as the Ardagh Chalice and the 12th-century Cross of Cong. The museum’s newest section is the creepy ‘Kingship and Sacrifice’ exhibition of mummified Iron Age bodies, along with tools, weapons and clothing, which have been discovered in Irish peat bogs. 

Cross Kildare Street, turn right for a few yards, then take the first left into Molesworth Street. Follow this past Frederick Street on your right to Dawson Street. Cross the street, turn right, then almost immediately turn left into Duke Street, which leads to Grafton Street. Turn left, then right and walk on for one short block, passing St Teresa’s Carmelite Church on the right. Cross Clarendon Street and continue down Coppinger Row to the corner of William Street South. From the museum, turn right up William Street South to the corner of Exchequer Street. Turn left, pass Drury Street on your left, then turn right on Great George’s Street. At the corner of Dame Street (not Dame Lane, which is on your right just before), turn left to reach City Hall on the left.

Exit City Hall and turn left again to enter Dublin Castle via the Cork Hill Gate entrance. The Chester Beatty Library and Oriental Collection are housed in the Bermingham Tower, at the southwest corner of the complex. The millionaire American aesthete Alfred Chester Beatty left his amazing collection of European religious books and manuscripts, Middle Eastern Korans, Egyptian papyri, beautiful Chinese jade books and works of art and craftsmanship from Thailand, Burma and Japan, to the Irish people, earning him honorary Irish citizenship in 1957. 

Leave the Chester Beatty Library, cross the square and continue to the pass the Record Tower – the last intact Medieval tower in Ireland – and the Chapel Royal to leave the castle complex through the Ship Street Little entrance. Turn left on to Werburgh Street and continue to the corner of Bride Street and Kevin Street Upper. Turn right, then take the first right into St Patrick’s Close and almost immediately after the corner turn right into Marsh’s Library. For scholars, this is a treasury of more than 25,000 antiquarian books and manuscripts. For dilettantes, the library built for Archbishop Narcissus Marsh by the architect Sir William Robinson in 1701 is a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual world of the 17th and 18th centuries. This, the oldest public library in Ireland, has remained unchanged since it was built, and its glowing wood panelling and elaborate fretwork are symbols of an earlier era of information technology, when the printed word still ruled. To return to the city centre, turn right out of the building and follow St Patrick’s Close to Patrick Street.