It was sunny and warm with periods of cloud and rain, typical Irish weather. Maureen and 
I went into a little book store on the corner across the street from trinity. I picked up the little book the 'Birds of Ireland' by Gordon Darcy. All sketches and lovely.
Also the Irish Potato Cookbook by Eveleen Coyle. Num, num, num. Maureen found quite a few books that she wanted.
Trinity College here we come. The entrance way or Front Arch is very cool, very wide, very old. In 1751, any unspent money by the Irish parliament was supposed to be returned to the English so when the board of the college asked for financial help in reconstruction the Irish MPs were more than happy to spend their money on the college. The English architect Theodore Jacobsen was hired and we see the results. Trinity college is housed more impressively than any college in Cambridge or Oxford. What I thought was of all the people who had walked through this archway. Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, thousands of students who went on to do greater things and maybe some not so great.
Originally the 150ft long structure was to be topped with three copper cupolas , one at either end and a huge one in the centre, until someone who had political connections noted that they had never seen anything like that in Italy . The plans were changed to a plainer front even though some of the construction work had already begun.
The sidewalks are cobbled. Just inside the gate was a sign for tours which would start in only a couple of minutes so we decided that the 30 to 45 minutes would be well spent going on the tour. The quadrangle or square just inside the gate came to be known as Parliament Square named after the generosity that allowed it to be built.
Our tour guide was a postgraduate of trinity and he was very funny and informative.
Trinity was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth to help consolidate the rule of the
monarchy in Ireland, and for much of its history it was seen as the university for
male Protestants. It was started outside the walls of Dublin in the old Augustinian monastery All Hallows and is now pretty much in the center of Dublin. Even though the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade Catholics from attending, threat of excomunication, until the late 20th century, Catholics have been permitted by the college to enter as early as 1753 but there were some restrictions on their membership to the college until 1873. Women were first admitted to the college as full members in 1904 and the first woman professor was appointed in 1934. The college is now 90% Catholic and 60% Women. Way to go us.
The first two buildings that you see to the left and the right as you enter parliament square
are the
the chapel
and the examination hall,
and they are basically mirror images. They were designed by the swedish architect Sir William Chambers in 1798, and when he decided to use the same fronts for both buildings, the college decided not to pay him as they had hired him to design two buildings. It didn't actually seem to bother him as he never actually set foot in Ireland anyway. Too Funny.
We proceeded down the sidewalk, to the tower in the center of the square. It is called the Campanile and was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon in 1854 and was finished in 1857. very cool. The two trees behind the tower , one on either side, are each two hundred years old.
When we turned around and faced back the way
we had just come we saw the entrance way.
The music school is above the entry arch and the Irish dormitory, where only Irish is allowed to be used on pain of fines, is to the right (the chapel building I think).
From where we are standing by the Campanile when we
turn left we see the dining hall which was originally built
in the 1740's by Richard Cassells but the roof collapsed twice so it was rebuilt by architect Hugh Darley.
The rules around the dining hall are quite interesting. It seems that they lock the doors before dinner and if
you are late you don't get in. Postgraduates eat free but they have to eat fast as the headmaster or provost ? of the dining
hall decides when the dinner starts and ends. When he is done eating everyone else is to, so, if he doesn't like his meal or is in a hurry they may only get five or six minutes to eat. One never knows.
When we turn to the right from the Campanile tower
there is the reading room which is attached
to the long library by a tunnel and is used by postgraduates doing research.
We go along the museum building passing a statue on the other side of the green that was placed there because the artist said that he would not donate it if they put it anywhere near the arts building that he thought was the ugliest building he had ever seen. unfortunately I do not recall the name of the artist.
Hilarious!
The museum building was designed by Sir Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward
and was completed in 1857.
The architects thought that they would give the stone carvers free reign and let them design their own capitals.
There are over 180 different carved capitals around the building. I did not take pictures of all of them all only a few.
Over one door there is a cat with a rat in its mouth , a fox and a cherub. I don't know what it is supposed to mean or signify. We did not go inside this building but I have since seen pictures and it is gorgeous inside. Great long wide staircases.
At the end of the walk at the corner of the Long Room, which holds the Long library and the Book of Kells, is the Rubricks. One of the oldest buildings on the grounds, 1700, it was once used as dorms and was home to some very famous people like Oscar Wilde.
One night, three young inebriated students came to scare one of the proffessors that they did not like.
They were at the door making so much noise that the proffessor thought that they were seriously going to harm him so he waved his gun at them and they left only to return with a gun and there was a gun fight with the students ending up shooting the professor. They went to trial but were acquitted.
One of the boys later became a Judge and another a parliamentarian. Only in Ireland you say.
After this we went to the arts building which actually was pretty ugly. I understood what that artist meant. But there was a really cool sculpture outside the building .
A spinning sculpture by a finnish artist? very interesting. It seems that when it was first installed the wind could turn it. As time went by it slowed down and eventually stopped altogether. Well, the college brought back the artist who looked at it and discovered that it had filled up with water so now there are some very small holes in the base of the sculpture to let the rain water drain out. I did push the six? foot tall six? foot circumference ball, it and it did spin. Very exciting. If you look at the reflections on the front of the ball you can see me taking this picture.
Then our tour guide told us about the Arts building based on the"hanging gardens of Babylon" and how it won an award from the concrete companies of Ireland for being a great building. (It is made up of a lot of concrete). It is on Fellows Square where no one is allowed to walk on the grass except for one day a year and is right across from the main entrance to the Long Room which holds the Long Library and the Book of Kells. So Exciting!! We have reached the end of our tour. The long Room or Old Library was designed by Thomas Burgh and was built from 1712 to 1732. Deane and Woodward added the timber tunnel vaults in 1858 to 1860. Now we can see the Book of Kells! and just in time too as it is starting to rain.
