Sunday last week I was lucky enough to be invited to take part in a walk around Dublin city centre with historian Pat Liddy. Pat is a well-known historian and face around Dublin and what he doesn’t know about Dublin, you could fit on the back of a postage stamp.
The walk was to promote a new initiative by Dublin City BID - the Business Improvement District. The BID are a non-profit organisation who are trying to improve the city through removing graffiti, removing rubbish, adding on-street flower displays, new Christmas lights, providing professional Street Ambassadors among others and now they have developed a new initiative of wrapping 14 of those boring, old, grey traffic boxes with drawings of landmarks, interesting facts about Dublin and a map of where in the city you are and what interesting things there are nearby to visit.
Though mostly aimed at tourists, the ‘interesting places to visit’ are sure to be of as much interest to Dubliners, visitors from elsewhere in Ireland as much as foreign tourists.
We met at The Church on Jervis Street, originally St. Mary’s Abbey which gave its name to both nearby Mary Street and Abbey Street and set off from there to Capel Street, Liffey Street, O’Connell Street and across to College Green and Nassau Street. Each stop had its own facts of interest which you can find out about on one of the Pat Liddy Walking Tours.
BID Daniel O'Connell Momument - North Side Image
My own personal favourite fact of the day was that the bullet holes on the south side of the Daniel O’Connell monument came from shots from British troops who were stationed at Trinity College, whereas the bullet holes in the north side of the monument were from the Irish men and women in the GPO and other buildings around O’Connell Street.
Being honest, I had only ever noticed one bullet hole in an angel’s breast so picking out a few more on a monument I’ve seen thousands of times was fun 
To find out more about the Dublin City BID initiative you can visit their website.
Checked the website, looks good, lots of different tours as well.
Had noticed the wraps on the junction boxes a while ago, and only realised it was a bid iniative when I got the newsletter a few weeks later. Great idea (the BID and the wraps as well).
@Seamus there really is a huge range of tours on offer, I must have a read of them…just noticed one there that took my interest The Great Guinness Walk
@lecraic it is a great initiative isn’t it? They have done so much work already too, long may it continue.
Did he tell you about the statue on college Green being the end of the Orange March route here in 18thC.
Bngr
No he didn’t! But he knows so much stuff, every single one of his walks is probably different