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Dublin Off-The-Beaten-Path Private Literary Walking Tour
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From €149 per person
Dublin has produced more celebrated writers per square mile than almost anywhere else on earth, and this private 2.5-hour tour takes you to the places that shaped them. With a professional English-speaking guide all to yourself (and your group), you’ll take in the spots where Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Samuel Beckett, and Sean O’Casey all lived, worked, and gathered.
The tour sticks to the places that matter - some well known, some genuinely off the usual tourist path - and you’ll have plenty of time to take photos along the way. Your guide will also be happy to point you toward local favourites for food and drink when the tour wraps up.
Meeting point: Your guide will meet you at the Oscar Wilde Monument in Merrion Square, Dublin.
The Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square is on the northwest corner of the park, reclining on a large rock. It’s colourful and hard to miss once you’re in the square, though Merrion Square itself is larger than first-time visitors expect. Give yourself a few minutes to find it rather than rushing across the park.
Bewley’s on Grafton Street is one of those Dublin institutions that has gone through periods of closure and revival over the decades. The stained glass windows by Harry Clarke are worth lingering over - they’re remarkable pieces of Irish craft that most people walk straight past on their way to order coffee. Ask your guide about the history of the building while you’re there.
Joyce, Kavanagh, Beckett, and O’Casey all left traces across this city that your guide will map out. If you want to go deeper after the tour, the Dublin Writers Museum on Parnell Square has archives and exhibits on all of them, and the James Joyce Centre on North Great George’s Street is a dedicated house museum. Both are within easy reach after the tour ends.
The Winding Stair makes a perfect end to the afternoon if you want to stay on. The bookshop is on the ground floor and the restaurant upstairs - the lunch and dinner menus focus on Irish produce, and the views across the Liffey to the Ha’penny Bridge are genuinely lovely. Book ahead if you plan to eat there; it fills up.
Literary Dublin runs on both sides of the Liffey. The tour’s route crosses between the Georgian southside and the northside, which is fitting - Beckett grew up in Foxrock, O’Casey in the north inner city, and the city’s literary geography doesn’t respect the divide that some Dubliners make too much of.