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Interactive Guided Tour of Printing History
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From €6 per person
Most museum collections sit behind glass. At the National Print Museum in Dublin, the collection is a working one and you’re encouraged to get your hands into it. This one-hour guided tour takes you through Ireland’s printing heritage from Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1439 right through to how the craft developed across the following centuries.
One of the standout moments is getting to see an original 1916 Proclamation. It’s one of the most important printed documents in Irish history and the story of how it was actually produced - rushed, improvised, and under enormous pressure - is told properly by your guide. The tour also takes in printing blocks, books, pamphlets and periodicals spanning hundreds of years.
The hands-on part is what people remember most. You’ll compose your own name in moveable type and print a personalised poster to take home. It’s a satisfying thing to do, and the poster makes for a souvenir that isn’t a tea towel. After the guided tour, the current temporary exhibition is included in your visit.
Meeting point: Enter Beggars Bush Barracks from Haddington Road. The museum is in the old chapel building in the back-right corner of the Barracks.
Finding the museum is half the adventure. The entrance is through Beggars Bush Barracks on Haddington Road, and the museum itself is in the old chapel at the back-right corner of the complex. It’s not signposted the way a street-facing museum would be, so knowing this in advance saves a few minutes of circling.
The 1916 Proclamation stop is the emotional heart of the tour. Even if you know the broad history, hearing the details of how it was physically produced - the improvised equipment, the fonts that had to be mixed because there weren’t enough matching ones - gives it a weight that reading about it in a book doesn’t.
This is one of the best-value hours in Dublin. At EUR6 for a guided tour with a hands-on element and a take-home print, it’s a genuine bargain. Groups are small (maximum 10 people) so the guide has time to answer questions properly rather than moving the crowd along.
The temporary exhibitions change regularly. Past shows have covered political prints, theatre posters and bottle label design. It’s worth checking what’s on when you’re visiting - the range is broader than you’d expect from a specialist print museum.
Kids genuinely love the moveable type. The hands-on compositing is tactile and satisfying in a way that children respond to immediately. The idea that every letter was a separate physical object that had to be placed by hand - the sheer patience of it - tends to land differently when you’re actually doing it yourself.