Dublin Walking Tours: Who Runs Them

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Dublin’s core is small enough to cross on foot in twenty five minutes, so nobody needs a guide to get around it. What a guide buys you here is the part you cannot see: which building the Rising was run from, which excavated street lies under the Civic Offices, and why a pub crawl became the city’s oldest running tour.

The operators, by name

The free tours are run by commercial operators rather than by hostels, and free means tips are expected, at €10 to €15 a head. Two are confirmed running in 2026.

  • Generation Tours meets in front of The Old Storehouse Bar, 3 Crown Alley, Temple Bar, beside Temple Bar Square and a couple of minutes from Trinity and the Ha’penny Bridge. generationtours.com .
  • SANDEMANs New Europe Dublin departures are listed both from the small square beside City Hall and from Trinity’s front gate, with typical starts around 11:00 and 14:00, so check the day’s meeting point on neweuropetours.eu rather than turning up at the wrong one.

The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl has been running since 1988 and is the oldest tour of its kind in the city. It starts at The Duke on Duke Street, runs about two hours, and is led by professional actors who perform Joyce, Beckett, Wilde and Behan between pubs. Roughly €16 to €23 depending on where you book, with evening departures around 19:30. dublinpubcrawl.com .

The 1916 Rebellion Walking Tour, led by the historian Lorcan Collins and colleagues, runs about two hours through the revolutionary period, taking in the GPO on O’Connell Street and Moore Street. Roughly €15 to €19. 1916rising.com .

Pat Liddy’s Walking Tours of Dublin is a long established independent operator covering the medieval city, the Vikings and Georgian Dublin.

If you would rather compare set departures and fixed prices in one list, browse Dublin walking tours on GetYourGuide or check Viator’s listings .

The best free walk has no guide on it

The medieval route is twenty minutes end to end and covers about a thousand years.

  1. Christ Church Cathedral, founded around 1028 by the Hiberno-Norse king Sitric Silkenbeard.
  2. Wood Quay, where the excavation of the 1970s uncovered the walled Viking town and the Civic Offices were built over it anyway.
  3. Dublinia, next to Christ Church, €16 adult if you want to go in.
  4. St Audoen’s, the only surviving medieval parish church in the city.
  5. St Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean and is buried.

Free apart from the interiors, and it is the single densest stretch of ground in Dublin.

Georgian Dublin, and the Phoenix Park

Merrion Square with the Oscar Wilde statue, Fitzwilliam Square, the doors, and the National Gallery of Ireland on the square’s west side, free and warm when it rains.

The Phoenix Park walk starts at the Parkgate Street gate: the Wellington Testimonial, the Papal Cross built for John Paul II’s 1979 visit, the fallow deer herd, Áras an Uachtaráin seen from outside, the Victorian Walled Garden and the Glen Pond in the Furry Glen. The park is 707 hectares and the largest enclosed public park in any European capital, open 24 hours and free. Maps at phoenixpark.ie .

The Wellington Testimonial is worth standing under and looking up at: 62 m of solid granite, the largest obelisk in Europe, begun in 1817 and finished in 1861, with eight granite steps at its base.

The one paid route that covers the hard history

Kilmainham Gaol is 3.5 km west and reached on the Luas Red Line to Suir Road or Dublin Bus 60, G1 or G2. It is a site of political imprisonment and of executions: the leaders of the 1916 Rising were held there and fourteen were executed, Parnell was held in 1881 and 1882, and de Valera was the last prisoner released when it closed in 1924. Access is guided-only, €8 adult, online-only, released 28 days ahead at midnight and gone in minutes, from kilmainhamgaolmuseum.ie . Walking it after the 1916 tour rather than before makes both better.

Practical

  • Rain is a baseline rather than a season here. Carry a waterproof in any month.
  • The Temple Bar cobbles are genuinely uneven, so this is not a thin-soled-shoe city.
  • Pickpocketing and phone snatching are the real risk, concentrated in Temple Bar, on Grafton Street and on O’Connell Street, worst on Friday and Saturday nights, with coordinated distraction teams working outside busy pubs. Bag zipped and to the front, phone away in crowds, licensed taxis or a ride app late at night.
  • Every walk here is within the €2 Leap fare if you would rather ride one leg of it.

Do the free medieval route on your first afternoon and take a paid tour on the second, once you know which century you want more of. Then decide which tickets are worth buying and what else there is to do indoors .