This first comprehensive Visitors’ Guide to Dublin’s Latin Quarter explores the city’s south Georgian enclave through the lives of its most celebrated cultural figures.
It features biographies and insights into the homes and haunts of Ireland’s greatest writers, from Samuel Beckett and Brendan Behan to Maeve Binchy, Mary Lavin, Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats.
The guide also highlights the artists who shaped Ireland’s visual culture, including Francis Bacon, John Behan, Roderic O’Conor, Jack B. Yeats, and the pioneering modernists May Guinness and Mainie Jellett.
Music lovers will discover the stories of composers and musicians such as Joan Trimble, Michael Larchet and Charles Villiers Stanford, a leading figure of the Victorian era.
Immortalised by poet Patrick Kavanagh, the Grand Canal lies at the heart of the quarter. Its towpaths and waterside haunts were frequented by literary greats including Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty and James Joyce, cementing the area’s place in Ireland’s cultural imagination.
The Latin Quarter runs from Pembroke Road and Upper Baggot Street to Merrion Row and St. Stephen's Green. It encompasses Fitzwilliam and Merrion Squares, home to Jack Yeats, Mainie Jellett and the remarkable Wilde family.
The Quarter is bordered by the Grand Canal, which channels the countryside into town. A singularly fruitful retreat for muses whose creations have reverberated around the world. From Ulysses and The Importance of Being Earnest to Dracula, Pygmalion, The Playboy of the Western World, The Quare Fellow, The Ginger Man and Waiting for Godot.
