EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum

Ten million people left Ireland between 1800 and 1930 — more than the island's current population — and this museum tells their story with a level of technological sophistication that earned it Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction three years running. EPIC is housed in the 200-year-old stone vaults of the CHQ Building, a customs warehouse built between 1817 and 1820 by John Rennie and Thomas Telford to store tobacco, tea, and spirits from incoming ships. The irony of telling an emigration story in a building designed for imports is probably intentional.

The museum describes itself as the world's first fully digital museum. There are no artifacts behind glass — instead, twenty themed galleries use projections, interactive touchscreens, and immersive installations to trace the Irish diaspora across the globe. You'll learn how Irish emigrants became presidents (22 US presidents claim Irish ancestry), revolutionaries (Che Guevara's grandmother was from Galway), and cultural forces from Buenos Aires to Sydney.

Neville Isdell, former CEO of Coca-Cola and himself a member of the Irish diaspora, bought the CHQ Building in 2013 and funded the museum. It was officially opened in 2016 by former President Mary Robinson. The Irish Family History Centre on the same floor lets visitors trace their own ancestral connections.

What makes EPIC genuinely moving is its refusal to sentimentalize. Emigration was often forced — by famine, poverty, political persecution. The galleries don't flinch from this. But they also show how the Irish diaspora reshaped the world, from labour movements to literature to the NYPD. It's a story about loss that somehow ends up being about influence.