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Irish Republican Army, Civil War Dublin Private Walking Tour
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From €165 per person
The Easter Rising of 1916 and the War of Independence that followed aren’t distant history in Dublin - you can walk the streets where it all happened. This private tour takes you to the key sites connected to the Irish Republican Army and Ireland’s long fight for independence, with a history expert guide who’s fluent in your chosen language.
Two options to choose from:
2-hour: IRA Tour A private walking tour covering the major sites of the Easter Rising and War of Independence - including the James Connolly Memorial, the Custom House, and the GPO (outside). Pickup from your Dublin city centre accommodation.
3-hour: IRA Tour with GPO Museum Everything in the 2-hour option, plus skip-the-line entry to the GPO Museum with a multilingual audio guide. Inside, you’ll see the original Proclamation of the Irish Republic, along with videos, audiovisual booths, and memorabilia that bring the Rising to life through the eyes of bystanders.
Meeting point: Molly Malone Statue, outside St. Andrew’s Church, Suffolk St, Dublin 2, D02 KX03.
The GPO still functions as a working post office. When you’re standing in front of it on O’Connell Street, it can be easy to focus on the bullet holes and the historical weight of the building and forget that people still walk in and post letters. That combination of the everyday and the profound is very Dublin. If you go inside after the tour, the atrium has a small exhibition and a statue of the dying Cú Chulainn, which was chosen to symbolise the sacrifice of the Rising’s leaders.
Context makes the Custom House hit differently. The Custom House on the north bank of the Liffey is one of the finest 18th-century buildings in Ireland, designed by James Gandon. The fact that the IRA burned it in 1921 as a deliberate act to destroy British administrative records held inside gives the building a complicated story - architectural beauty and political violence in the same structure. Your guide will unpack exactly why the burning happened and what it cost.
The Famine Memorial is genuinely affecting. The bronze figures at Custom House Quay, created by sculptor Rowan Gillespie and unveiled in 1997, are not the kind of memorial you walk past without stopping. They represent the starving people who left Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s, and they’re placed along the route to the historic emigration ships. It’s a quiet and important stop on this tour.
If history is a serious interest, book the 3-hour option. The GPO Museum is smaller than it sounds but very well put together. The original Proclamation of the Irish Republic is in there, and the audiovisual material does a good job of making the week of the Easter Rising feel immediate rather than textbook-ish. The skip-the-line access is genuinely useful - queues can build up, especially in summer.
This tour is private throughout. That means your guide can adjust the pace and depth of commentary to what you’re actually interested in. If you’ve read extensively about Michael Collins or the War of Independence, say so at the start - your guide is a history expert and will meet you where your knowledge already is.