Old Library & Book of Kells

Trinity’s greatest treasures are found within the Old Library, built by Thomas Burgh between 1712 and 1732. The star of the show is the Book of Kells, a breathtaking, illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament, created around AD 800 by monks on the Scottish island of Iona, but more stunning still is the 65m Long Room, the library’s main chamber, which houses around 200,000 of the library’s oldest volumes. Other displays include a rare copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, read out by Pádraig Pearse at the beginning of the Easter Rising in 1916, as well as the so-called harp of Brian Ború, which dates from around 1400, making it one of the oldest harps in Ireland.