National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology
Victorian rotunda on Kildare Street holding Ireland's prehistoric gold, bog bodies and Viking finds.
The National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology is the oldest of the museum's four sites and holds the state collection of Irish antiquities, some two million objects spanning roughly 9,000 years. It was built between 1885 and 1890 to designs by Thomas Newenham Deane and his son Thomas Manly Deane, in a Victorian Palladian manner, and opened to the public in August 1890. Admission to all four National Museum sites is free.
The entrance rotunda is the building's showpiece, with a domed ceiling, marble columns of Irish stone and an elaborate mosaic floor. Permanent galleries cover prehistoric Ireland, the gold work of the Bronze Age, the Treasury of early medieval metalwork, Viking and medieval Dublin, and Ancient Egypt. The Kingship and Sacrifice gallery displays Iron Age bog bodies recovered from Irish peatlands, shown alongside evidence for the rituals associated with them.
Highlights
- The Ardagh Chalice and Tara Brooch in the Treasury
- Ór: Ireland's Gold, the Bronze Age goldwork collection
- Iron Age bog bodies in Kingship and Sacrifice
- Domed entrance rotunda with mosaic floor and marble columns
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