Literature, Music & Art

Ireland has four Nobel Prize winners for literature: W.B. Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969), and Seamus Heaney (1995). Alongside giants like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker (Dracula!), and today Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, Sebastian Barry.

James Joyce and his Ulysses made Dublin a literary world heritage site. The novel takes place on a single day (June 16, 1904, "Bloomsday") in Dublin. On Bloomsday, Dubliners dress in Edwardian costumes and pilgrimage to the locations.

Oscar Wilde — born at 1 Merrion Square, whose colorful statue lies at the corner today — brought Irish wit to world literature. The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl (€16) combines literature and pints: Actors guide through the pubs where Joyce, Behan, and Flann O'Brien drank and wrote.

Music is Ireland's heartbeat. In every pub, every village, somewhere a Trad Session is happening: Musicians meet spontaneously and play — fiddle, tin whistle, uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes), bodhrán (frame drum), guitar, banjo. The pieces are reels, jigs, hornpipes — some hundreds of years old.

Best places for Trad Sessions:

• Galway: Tigh Neachtain, Crane Bar, Monroe's Tavern
• Dublin: The Cobblestone (Smithfield), O'Donoghue's (Merrion Row)
• Doolin, Co. Clare: Gus O'Connor's, McGann's — Ireland's trad capital
• Dingle: Almost every pub has sessions in the summer

Beyond trad: U2, The Cranberries, Sinéad O'Connor, Van Morrison, Hozier, The Pogues, Enya, Glen Hansard, Fontaines D.C. — for a country of this size, an incredible density of world-class talent.

Riverdance (premiered at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994) revolutionized Irish step dancing worldwide. The Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is the largest traditional music festival in the world — one week, 400,000 visitors, free of charge.