Trinity College Library (Long Room), Dublin
The barrel-vaulted nave of books – 200,000 volumes and the Book of Kells beneath the Long Room’s oak sky, Ireland’s most beautiful interior.
At a glance
- Type
- Research library
- Period
- 1712-1732; vault raised 1860
- Style
- Georgian; Victorian barrel vault
- Location
- Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
- Coordinates
- 53.3438, -6.2546
- Treasures
- Book of Kells; Brian Boru harp; 1916 Proclamation
Overview
The Long Room runs 65 metres of oak galleries under the barrel vault Deane and Woodward raised in 1860 when Burgh’s flat-ceilinged Georgian hall overflowed – 200,000 of the library’s oldest volumes in the chamber routinely titled the world’s most beautiful library room. Below, the Book of Kells – the 9th-century gospels’ insular masterwork – turns a page daily for its pilgrim queue.
History
Legal deposit since 1801 stocked the shelves; marble busts (Swift’s by Roubiliac the prize) line the colonnade. The medieval harp – Ireland’s emblem’s model – and a 1916 Proclamation original flank the route; the 2020s conservation decanted the books for cleaning and fire-proofing, returning them shelf by shelf to the restored vault.
Architecture and Design
Burgh’s arcaded podium lifts the hall over Fellows’ Square damp; the Victorian vault’s ribs spring from the original cornice line. Ladders, gallery rails, and the busts’ gaze compose scholarship’s cathedral set.
Cultural significance
The Long Room is Ireland’s learning made visible – Kells’ art, Swift’s satire, the harp’s heraldry in one nave – and the prototype every fantasy library borrows.
Visiting today
Timed tickets bundle Kells exhibition and Long Room; first slots beat the crowds. The campus cobbles and Berkeley’s brutalist library counterpoint outside.
Getting there
College Green’s gates open from Dame street; every Dublin bus and the Luas Green line pass.
Sources and resources
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