Free tips · 5 min read
Temple Bar: What to Do and What to Skip
Temple Bar is not a trap so much as a misunderstanding. Here is the useful version of it.
What Temple Bar actually is
Temple Bar is a small cobbled quarter between Dame Street and the river. It contains genuinely good things — a photography gallery, a food market, two fine theatres, a couple of long-standing restaurants — surrounded by very expensive pints sold to people who arrived expecting music and got a crowd.
The confusion comes from the name. There is a neighbourhood called Temple Bar and a pub called The Temple Bar. The pub is the one your feed shows you.
Worth doing
Go in daylight. The Saturday food market, the Gallery of Photography, and a walk through the empty cobbled lanes on a weekday morning are all worth twenty minutes each. If you are in Dublin for theatre, the Project Arts Centre and the Smock Alley are here and are excellent.
Worth skipping
The postcard pubs after 7pm. You will pay a premium for a pint, stand in a crowd of other visitors, and hear a set list built for the room rather than by it. Nothing about it is a scam; it is simply not what you came for.
Where to go instead, five minutes away
Walk south past Dame Street or west towards the Liberties and the atmosphere changes entirely. Within a five-minute walk you can find a Victorian pub with snugs, a quiet back bar with a fire, and traditional music played by people who came to play rather than perform.