A few hours well-spent (National Museum of Ireland, Kildare street)

Member Name: paddygleeson

Product:	National Museum of Ireland, Kildare street
Date:	24/09/09 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A central location and some fantastic artefacts

Disadvantages: Poor cafe and badly laid out

This museum is located in the heart of Dublin, right beside the Dáil( essentially the Irish parliment), and is just up the road from Trinity College also. Its free and not overly big, its easliy reached by 5 mins walk from anywhere around o'Connel Street and so it is a very good and well spent evening or couple of hours.

the museum itseld is split themeaticaly. In the main are there is a large exhibition showing a lot of prehistoric artefacts. In particular the Bronze Age goldwork exhibiton is truly breathtaking. Of this is what must be admitted to ba a rather poor room containing a number of Iron age artefacts, before entering the Treasury. This houses some of the best and most famous artefcat like the Ardagh chalice, although the room itself is pretty appauling and a bit grotty.

Upstairs is a number of exhibitions on life and death in the Roman world, later medieval artefcts/ Norman period, and an exhibition on the Vikings among others. Most of the Viking artefacts are from the Fishamble street excavationa dn are extremely well preserved.

The highlight of the museum currently for me is a tie between an exhibition containing the bog bodies pertainig to kingshiop and sacrifice. The Bog bodies are so well preserved this is quite breathtaking, in particular well enoughto be able to see the fingernails and prints of some. Contained currrently in this exhibition also is the Gundestrup cauldron on loan from Scandinavia. The other highlight is the exhibition on the excavations at the hill of Tara which have only recently been published.

there is also a cafe downstairs, but sadly ridiculously overpriced and not even that tasty. So bring aome of mummys sandwiches.

Summary: A realy good museum but more so because of what it contains as opppossed to the quality of the exhib