Trinity College

Queen Elizabeth I founded this university in 1592 on the grounds of a confiscated Augustinian monastery, and for the next two hundred years it existed solely to educate Protestant gentlemen. Catholics were technically allowed to enroll from 1793, but the Catholic Church banned its own flock from attending without special permission — a ban that lasted until 1970. So for almost four centuries, Trinity was either legally or socially off-limits to the majority of Ireland's population. Now it's the country's most prestigious university, and nobody seems to hold a grudge.

The campus is a 47-acre sanctuary of cobblestones and cricket pitches dropped right in the middle of Dublin's busiest shopping district. Walk through the front arch and the city just vanishes. The Campanile bell tower, erected in 1853, marks the spot where the original monastery chapel once stood. Parliament Square looks like something out of an English period drama, which is exactly the point — the architects were deliberately aping Oxford and Cambridge.

But the real draw is the Old Library and its Long Room, a 65-metre barrel-vaulted cathedral of books that holds 200,000 of Trinity's oldest volumes. The busts lining both sides were added in the 1840s, and the room itself was originally flat-ceilinged — the soaring barrel vault was a later renovation to squeeze in more shelf space. It's also home to the Book of Kells, but that deserves its own stop.

Trinity's alumni list reads like an Irish literary hall of fame: Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Samuel Beckett. Four Nobel laureates have walked these grounds. Stand in Front Square and you're standing where Ireland learned to argue with the world.