Overview
With its literary history and Georgian architecture, its modern art galleries and classic pubs, Dublin has become both an international tourist destination and a place for stylish, sophisticated lifestyles. This book explores a city that both embodies urban life in a previous century and represents European style in the new millennium.Georgian Dublin, the traditional city, has been restored to its former grace and grandeur. Its elegant streets and squares and its major architectural monuments provide the old city with an infrastructure from which new, hip neighborhoods have arisen. New Dublin is represented by the rejuvenated neighborhood of Temple Bar, the city's own "Left Bank." Its eighteenth-century streets are now home to a heady mixture of art centers and galleries, bars, restaurants, clubs, and shops. Major features in the book evoke the stylish residences of the new Dublin, the lifestyles and homes of the city's social, artistic, and commercial elite—from opulent, traditional Georgian to spare modernist and the very latest in urban loft conversions. Dublin's social tradition is represented in the hotels and parks, shops, bars, and racetracks—all alive with the resurgent excitement of the city. And the book explores the city's special relationship with the literary life, from Jonathan Swift to Roddy Doyle—not to mention Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Joyce, O'Casey, and Beckett—whose impact never fades. Living in Dublin is a visual delight, completed by listings of places to stay and eat and a guide to the sights of the city. 250 color illustrations.Author Biography: Robert O'Byrne studied history and art at Trinity College, Dublin and is now a full-time writer on the staff of the Irish Times. Alex Ramsay's photographs have most recently been seen in The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Tuscany and The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Provence, both published by Thames & Hudson.
Synopsis
With its literary history and Georgian architecture, its modern art galleries and classic pubs, Dublin has become both an international tourist destination and a place for stylish, sophisticated lifestyles. This book explores a city that both embodies urban life in a previous century and represents European style in the new millennium.Georgian Dublin, the traditional city, has been restored to its former grace and grandeur. Its elegant streets and squares and its major architectural monuments provide the old city with an infrastructure from which new, hip neighborhoods have arisen. New Dublin is represented by the rejuvenated neighborhood of Temple Bar, the city's own "Left Bank." Its eighteenth-century streets are now home to a heady mixture of art centers and galleries, bars, restaurants, clubs, and shops. Major features in the book evoke the stylish residences of the new Dublin, the lifestyles and homes of the city's social, artistic, and commercial elite—from opulent, traditional Georgian to spare modernist and the very latest in urban loft conversions. Dublin's social tradition is represented in the hotels and parks, shops, bars, and racetracks—all alive with the resurgent excitement of the city. And the book explores the city's special relationship with the literary life, from Jonathan Swift to Roddy Doyle—not to mention Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Joyce, O'Casey, and Beckett—whose impact never fades. Living in Dublin is a visual delight, completed by listings of places to stay and eat and a guide to the sights of the city. 250 color illustrations.
Author Biography: Robert O'Byrne studied history and art at Trinity College, Dublin and is now a full-time writer on the staff of the Irish Times. Alex Ramsay's photographs have most recently been seen in The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Tuscany and The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Provence, both published by Thames & Hudson.
Library Journal
With the help of Ramsay's beautiful photographs, O'Byrne (After a Fashion; Hugh Lane) has put together a nice evocation of an old Irish metropolis that has seen some rough times. From backwater capital to trendy tourist mecca, from Viking conquest to literary hotbed, Dublin has seen the highs and lows that are natural companions of a long and complex history. O'Byrne, who studied at Trinity College in Dublin and later wrote for the Irish Times, has organized this work in a surprisingly useful way that belies its coffee-table book appearance. The text is readable and informative, the pictures truly outstanding, and the visitor's guide at the back a great boost to the book's overall usefulness. All in all, this is a nice tool for helping to plan a vacation in Dublin or good armchair reading on what you're missing if you don't go. One complaint: with almost 150 attractive pictures on the inside, it's hard to comprehend why such a foreboding, almost noir picture was chosen for the book's cover. Recommended for public libraries with travel sections.-Travis McDade, Ohio State Univ., Columbus Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.