Qualla: Temple Bar, Dublin

Temple Bar, Dublin: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean Housen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of what saved Temple Bar was a bus station that never got built. In the 1970s the state transport company CIÉ began quietly buying up properties across the cobbled streets between Dame Street and the Liffey, with plans to demolish everything and erect a vast bus terminus over an underground 1,500-space car park. While they waited for the planning to go through, they leased the half-empty buildings to anyone who would pay rent. Artists moved in. Galleries opened. Cafes appeared. By the time the bus station plans were finally killed in the late 1980s after years of protest, the squatter-tenants had accidentally created exactly the kind of bohemian district that Dublin had no idea it wanted - and the city decided to keep it.

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Image: Jean Housen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar, Dublin: The Templar Bar

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joseph Mischyshyn, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before any bohemia, Temple Bar was just a stretch of riverbank outside the medieval city walls. An Augustinian Friary of the Most Holy Trinity sat near Cecilia Street from about 1259, but the area was repeatedly attacked by Gaelic raiders and largely abandoned by the fourtee...

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Image: Joseph Mischyshyn | CC BY-SA 2.0

Temple Bar, Dublin: Messiah on Fishamble Street

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean Housen, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 13 April 1742, in a hall on Fishamble Street at the western edge of what is now Temple Bar, George Frideric Handel personally conducted the world premiere of his oratorio Messiah. Ticket sales had been so successful that the audience was asked, in the published announcement, t...

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Image: Jean Housen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar, Dublin: Decline and the Bus Station

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean Housen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The eighteenth century had brought Temple Bar its prosperity and, by some accounts, its reputation as the centre of Dublin's prostitution trade. The nineteenth century brought decline. The twentieth century brought urban decay - by the 1960s the cobbled streets and Georgian build...

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Image: Jean Housen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple Bar, Dublin: Temple Bar Properties

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Kernan, CC BY 4.0. In 1991 the Irish government established Temple Bar Properties, a not-for-profit company chaired first by Paddy Teahon and then by Laura Magahy, charged with regenerating the area as Dublin's official 'cultural quarter.' The streets were re-cobbled. The Georgian buildings were re...

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Image: David Kernan | CC BY 4.0

Temple Bar, Dublin: Stag Parties and Saturday Mornings

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BKP, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the early 2000s, the bars had multiplied faster than the galleries. Temple Bar became the default destination for British stag and hen parties, drawn by cheap Ryanair flights and late opening hours. The residential population, which peaked around 2,000 in 2011, mostly in the q...

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Image: BKP | CC BY-SA 3.0