Lonely Planet - Dublin

4. Distinguishing your Hirst from your Hockney in an old soldiers' home for new art

Even if the thought of modern art leaves you cold, the setting of the IMMA will undoubtedly provide reason enough to visit. The country's top contemporary art gallery is spectacularly located in the former Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the city's finest surviving 17th century building. The grounds, with their long tree-lined avenue and fountain-filled Formal Garden with views across the Liffey to Phoenix Park, make a fantastic place to stroll.

Built between 1680 and 1684, this fine building with a striking facade inspired by Les Invalides in Paris, is laid-out with a central cobbled courtyard. Inside, the light-filled museum juxtaposes the work of major established artists with that of up-and-comers. The gallery's 4000-strong collection includes works by Picasso, Miro and Vasarely, as well as more contemporary artists including Gilbert and George, Gillian Wearing and Damien Hirst. The gallery displays ever-changing shows from its own works, and hosts touring exhibitions.

Modern Irish art is always on display and Irish and international artists live and work on-site in the converted coach houses. The New Galleries, in the restored Deputy Master's House, should not be missed.

5. Play, stroll or snooze in Dublin's favourite green lung

Workers at lunch, lovers and layabouts can be found splayed about its nine manicured hectares at the merest hint of sun, content among the green lawns and fowl-filled ponds, sharing food and a laugh with each other while the sun shines.

Once upon a time, handsome St Stephen's Green was a common where public whippings, burnings and hangings took place; these days, the worst punishment is a telling off by the warden for careless cycling or for kicking a ball on the grass - with lawns like these, it's almost impossible to resist.

The fine Georgian buildings around the square date mainly from Dublin's 18th-century boom. During the 1916 Easter Rising, a band of Irish rebel forces occupied St Stephen's Green, led by the colourful Irish nationalist Countess Constance Markievicz, later the first woman elected to the Irish Parliament. Markievicz failed to take the grand Shelbourne Hotel, a popular society meeting place (although gunshots apparently disturbed the ladies at lunch, with bullets flying through the windows), but the rebels did seize the Royal College of Surgeons building on the western side of the square. If you look closely at its columns you can still see the bullet marks.

A few doors from the Shelbourne is a small Huguenot Cemetery, established in 1693 for French Protestant refugees. The south side is home to the beautifully restored Newman House and the Byzantine-inspired Newman University Church.

Statues and memorials dot the green, including those of Sir Arthur Guinness and James Joyce. Around the central fountain are busts of Countess Markievicz and a 1967 Henry Moore sculpture of WB Yeats.

6. The gaol where beats the gruesome heart of Irish history, in all its defiant glory

If you have any interest in Irish history, especially the juicy bits about resistance to English rule, you will be shaken and stirred by a visit to this infamous, eerie prison. It was the stage for many of the most tragic and heroic episodes in Ireland's recent past, and the list of its inmates reads like a who's who of Irish nationalism. Solid and sombre, its walls absorbed the barbarism of British occupation and recount them in whispers to every visitor.

After the 1916 Easter Rising, 14 of the 15 rebel executions took place at Kilmainham. James Connolly, who was so badly injured during fighting he couldn't stand, was strapped to a chair in the Execution Yard to face the firing squad. The ruthlessness of the killings outraged the public, both in Ireland and England, and boosted the nationalist cause.

The East Wing, modelled on London's Pentonville Prison, with metal catwalks suspended around a light-filled, vaulted room, allowed guards full view of all the cells. Graffiti, scratched and scrawled by prisoners in the cells, is moving stuff.

Guided tours to Kilmainham include an excellent museum; the prison chapel; the exercise and execution yards; and the dark, dank old wing. During the Great Famine, thousands of petty thieves, including children, were crammed in here.