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The Poetry Stroll: A Literary Walking Tour (Sweny's Pharmacy)
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Joyce is remembered mostly as a novelist, but he was also a singer and a poet. This hour-long stroll approaches him through that lens, following his footsteps through the Dublin of the early twentieth century with poetry and live music as your guides.
Your tour starts inside Sweny’s Pharmacy on Lincoln Place - a Victorian chemist’s shop that operated from 1847 until 2009 and has been kept exactly as it was. Joyce fans know it as the shop where Leopold Bloom buys a piece of lemon soap in chapter five of Ulysses. That soap is still sold there today, made to the original recipe. It’s one of those small details that makes Dublin feel genuinely lived-in by its literary past.
From Sweny’s, the stroll moves to Merrion Square Park, where Oscar Wilde reclines on a rock facing the house where he grew up. Your guide performs some of Wilde’s poetry set to music here, along with pieces by his mother, Lady Jane Wilde - better known by her pen name, Speranza.
The group is small, up to 10 people, and the tour runs in English. The guide is inside Sweny’s, the one with the guitar, and the tour starts at 3pm.
Sweny’s Pharmacy (20 min) - This Victorian pharmacy operated from 1847 until 2009, and its interior has been preserved just as it was. It’s best known to Joyce fans as the shop where Leopold Bloom buys a piece of lemon soap in chapter five of Ulysses - and you can still buy that soap today, made to the original recipe.
Merrion Square Park - Oscar Wilde Statue (15 min) - In the park, you’ll find Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock, looking towards the house where he and his family once lived. Your guide performs some of Wilde’s poetry set to music here, along with pieces by his mother, Lady Jane Wilde, better known by her pen name, Speranza.
Meeting point: Sweny’s Pharmacy, 1 Lincoln Place, Dublin. Look for the sign above the door and the black and white photos of Joyce and Wilde in the windows. The tour starts at 3pm - your guide will be inside, the one with the guitar.
Buy the lemon soap when you’re at Sweny’s. It’s not a tourist gimmick. The soap is made to the original Victorian recipe and sold by the volunteers who now run the pharmacy as a cultural space. Taking one home is a small but genuine connection to the book.
Read the relevant chapter of Ulysses before you go, even just loosely. Chapter five - the Lotus Eaters episode - is the one set around Sweny’s. You don’t need to be a Joyce scholar to enjoy this tour, but knowing even the rough outline of what Bloom is doing in that part of Dublin makes the stops feel more grounded.
Merrion Square is one of Dublin’s finest Georgian squares and worth a full slow walk around. The Wilde statue is at the northwest corner, near the house where he was born at Number 1. The square itself is ringed with well-preserved Georgian townhouses that give you a sense of what the neighbourhood looked like in its Victorian prime.
The tour is an hour and feels genuinely intimate at 10 people. If you’re travelling alone or with one other person, that small-group format makes it easy to ask questions and follow threads your guide opens up. Don’t hold back.
Arrive a few minutes before 3pm and have a look around Sweny’s while you wait. The interior hasn’t changed much in over a century. The shelves, the fittings, the general atmosphere of a late-Victorian chemist’s shop - it’s worth taking in slowly before the guide begins.