Phoenix Park

At 707 hectares, Phoenix Park is the largest enclosed urban park in Europe — more than twice the size of New York's Central Park. The 11-kilometre perimeter wall encloses a landscape of broad grasslands, ancient woodlands, and a herd of fallow deer that has been here since the 1660s. The deer are genuinely wild, not penned, and watching them graze in the early morning mist with Dublin's skyline in the background is one of the city's most surreal experiences.

The Duke of Ormond created the park in 1662 as a royal deer hunting ground, which required walling off 2,000 acres of what had been common land. When the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham was built in 1680, the park was reduced to its present size. It was finally opened to the public by the Earl of Chesterfield in 1745. The name has nothing to do with the mythical bird — it's a corruption of "fionn uisce," Irish for "clear water," referring to a spring in the park.

The park contains some remarkable structures. The Wellington Monument is the largest obelisk in Europe at 62 metres. Dublin Zoo, established in 1830, is the fourth-oldest zoo in the world. The Papal Cross marks the spot where Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on September 29, 1979, before a congregation of over one million people — roughly one-third of Ireland's population at the time.

Phoenix Park was also the scene of one of Ireland's most shocking political crimes: the 1882 Phoenix Park Murders, when members of the Irish National Invincibles assassinated the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his undersecretary Thomas Henry Burke with surgical knives while they walked near the Viceregal Lodge.