IRISH CAPITAL RIVALS BIG CITIES IN CULTURE, ART MUSEUMS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993                   TAG: 9303120638
SECTION: TRAVEL                    PAGE: F-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ALAN LITTELL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
IRISH CAPITAL RIVALS BIG CITIES IN CULTURE, ART MUSEUMS
It would be hard to think of a world metropolis whose most important cultural assets are a better-kept secret than Dublin's.
For too many visitors, Ireland's capital is known solely for its atmospheric pubs and shopping bargains in woolens and crystal.
Surprisingly, what is not so generally known is that Dublin also contains a wealth of fine and decorative arts and historical artifacts that, for discriminating museum-goers, rank the city with London, Paris, Vienna and New York.
The following is a tour of some of the prime showcases of the glories that were - and are - Ireland:\ \ National Gallery of Ireland
The strength of the collection owes much to George Bernard Shaw. The Dublin-born dramatist left part of his estate to the gallery, including screen rights to the play, "Pygmalion," that later became known as "My Fair Lady."
The gallery dates from 1864: parquet floors, coffered ceilings, crystal chandeliers. The principal concentration is on Irish art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Here you will see landscapes in the Dutch manner by William Ashford and the moody renderings of Dublin street scenes by Walter Osborne.
The abstract impressionism of Jack Yeats is abundantly represented, along with a haunting depiction of Yeats' brother, the poet William Butler Yeats, by their portrait-painter father, John Butler Yeats.
Major holdings of British and continental European art include 18th-century works by Hogarth, Gainsborough, Romney and Reynolds; a 17th-century Rembrandt masterpiece, "Rest on the Flight Into Egypt"; and 19th-century oils by the French impressionists Claude Monet and Paul Signac.
The gallery (Merrion Square West) is open Monday through Saturday, 10-6; Sunday, 2-5. Admission is free.\ \ National Museum of Ireland
A five-minute walk away, visitors will find a vast railway station of a building, with a pillared rotunda and a soaring roof supported by filigree iron trusses rising from fluted columns. The century-old National Museum is, in effect, Ireland's treasure chest. The main hall features a dazzling display of Celtic antiquities: hammered gold ornaments that date from as early as 2,000 B.C. In an anteroom is the celebrated 8th-century "Tara Brooch," an amber-encrusted robe fastener.
An opposite wing is devoted to the weapons, uniforms, documents and photographs that trace Ireland's struggle for independence from 1900 to the creation in 1922 of the Irish Free State, forerunner of the modern Republic of Ireland.
The museum (Kildare Street and Merrion Row) is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10-5; Sunday, 2-5. Admission is free.\ \ Number Twenty Nine
This restored Georgian town house at the edge of Merrion Square is a splendid evocation of Dublin's elegant past. Filled with period art and furniture, the building - owned by the Electricity Supply Board and the National Museum of Ireland - recreates images of upper-class family life in the 18th century.
From a basement scullery to upstairs dining and drawing rooms and an attic nursery, authentic touches include Spode and Staffordshire dinner services, a Dublin spinnet by Samuel Moorland, stunning examples of satinwood marquetry and rococo plasterwork.
The house (29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street) is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10-5; Sunday, 2-5. Admission is free.\ \ Dublin Writers Museum
One of the most recent additions to the city's cultural scene is an assemblage of books, manuscripts and memorabilia that pay tribute to Ireland's literary heritage beginning with the 17th century. The holdings focus, however, on a pantheon of modern authors - James Joyce, Sean O'Casey and the nation's three Nobel laureates, Yeats, Shaw and Samuel Becket.
On view are mementos ranging from O'Casey's typewriter and Frank O'Connor's pipe to Brendan Behan's seaman's identity card and letters by Shaw. Among the displays is a scarce first edition of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897). An equally rare volume of verse by Joyce, "Pomes Penyeah" (1927), also can be seen.
The museum 18/19 Parnell Square North) is open Monday through Saturday, 10-5; Sunday, 2-6. Admission is $3.50. A bookstore is on the premises.\ Trinity College Old Library
The east pavilion houses Ireland's greatest pride, the 8th-century Book of Kells. The sumptuously decorated Latin test, in Irish majuscule script, is the most famous and arguably the most beautiful illuminated Gospel manuscript in the world. Exhibited also are the 9th-century Book of Armagh and 7th-century Book of Durrow.
The library (College Green) is open Monday through Saturday, 9:30-5; Sunday, 12-5. Admission is $4.25.\ \ Irish Jewish Museum
In a district of tidy row houses, a plain brick building that once served as a synagogue traces the unusual history of Irish Jewry through ground-floor displays of letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, memorabilia. (Dublin's 1,500-strong Jewish community nurtured two of the city's lord mayors and a president of Israel, Chaim Herzog). The synagogue portion of the museum - with Torah, gas lamps and scarred wooden benches - occupies the second floor and dates from 1917.
The museum (Walworth Road of Vitoria Street, South Circular Road area) is open Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, May through September; and Sunday, 10:30-2:30 October through April. Closed Jewish holidays. Donations appreciated.\ \ Glasnevin Cemetery
Roaming this memorable forest of Celtic crosses and funerary sculpture is to journey in time through what effectively is an open-air museum of the country's 19th- and 20th-century revolutionary past. Here you will find memorials to the chief heroes of Irish independence: Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera. The massive round-tower just inside the gates marks O'Connells tomb.
The cemetery (Finglas Road, two miles north of the city center) is open daily, 8-5. Admission is free.\ \ Kilmainham Gaol Museum
On a hill above the River Liffey a few miles west of central Dublin stands the bleak gray fortress that served as Ireland's political prison from 1796 until its closing in 1924. Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and other leaders of the abortive 1916 Easter "rising" against British rule were executed here by firing squad. A visit to the museum is a moving experience. It includes a guided tour of the execution yard and the scabrous cells where the condemned men were held. Relics of the 1916 period are displayed in the central block.
\ James Joyce Museum
The squat, round so-called Martello Tower on the outskirts of Dublin at Sandycove is a must on any cultural tour. James Joyce lived in the old fortification in 1904 and set the opening scene of his avant-garde novel "Ulysses" there. A museum since 1962, it contains a replica of the famed author's bedroom, with hammock, tattered quilts, books, bottles of Guinness's Extra Stout. There is a rich collection of Joyce memorabilia in the ground-floor display area.
The gun deck at the top of the tower commands superb prospects of Dublin Bay and the Wicklow hills.
The museum (off Marine Parade, Sandycove) is open Monday through Saturday, 10-1 and 2-5, and Sunday, 2:30-6, May through September (closed the rest of the year). Admission is $2.75. about Dublin museums and galleries are available from the Irish Tourist Board, 757 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017 (800-223-6470).

Alan and Caroline Littell are a free-lance travel writer and photographer team who live in Alfred, N.Y.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB