Guinness Storehouse

Arthur Guinness was either supremely confident or completely insane when he signed the lease on this brewery in 1759. He was 34 years old, and he committed to a 9,000-year lease at £45 per year for a disused brewery at St. James's Gate. Nine thousand years. The lease runs until the year 10759, which is either the greatest real estate deal in history or the most optimistic bet ever placed on a pint of beer.

It paid off. By 1838, St. James's Gate was the largest brewery in Ireland. By 1886, it was the largest in the world, pumping out 1.2 million barrels a year. In the 1930s, Guinness employed 5,000 workers — practically a city within a city — and the company ran its own railway, fire brigade, and medical clinic for employees. Workers got free pints, which probably helped with retention.

The Storehouse itself occupies a 1902 fermentation plant that was the first multi-storey steel-framed building constructed in Ireland, designed in the Chicago School style. When it was converted into a museum in 2000, the architects built the exhibition around a giant glass atrium shaped like a pint glass — 14 million pints' worth, if you're counting. Seven floors take you through the brewing process, the history of Guinness advertising (those toucan posters are genuinely iconic), and finally up to the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, where your ticket includes a pint with a 360-degree panoramic view of Dublin.

Over twenty million people have visited since it opened, making it Dublin's most popular tourist attraction by a landslide. Arthur would be pleased, and he's still got about 8,733 years left on that lease.