Dublin is a city that rewards those who walk slowly and look up. The Georgian squares, the Victorian arcades, the bookshops and the pubs — it is a city built at a human scale, and it shows.

The literary Dublin of Joyce, Beckett and Behan is still very much present — in the pubs of Mulligan's and Kehoe's, in the Long Room of Trinity College's library, in the streets of the Liberties where the old tenement culture has given way to a new generation of makers and restaurants.

Beyond the city, the east coast offers its own rewards. The Wicklow Mountains begin almost immediately south of the suburbs — the valley of Glendalough, with its sixth-century monastic ruins reflected in two dark lakes, is one of the most beautiful places in Ireland and is less than an hour from the city centre.

The Boyne Valley to the north holds Newgrange, a passage tomb older than Stonehenge and Giza, aligned with the winter solstice sunrise. The walled town of Kilkenny, two hours south, is one of the finest medieval towns in Ireland. Bella Via designs itineraries that use Dublin as a base for exploring the extraordinary depth of the east.

Dublin is the beginning of an Irish journey, not the whole of it. We will help you use it as the gateway it was always meant to be.