You know us: we love hanging out at a university. Especially now that we don’t have any responsibilities at one! Dublin has two big universities, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. Our post today is about the former (mostly because we’ve been using its libraries).
Although Dublin had a university already in the fourteenth century, Trinity College Dublin (or TCD for short) began life in 1592 when Queen Elizabeth I gave a charter for the establishment of ‘the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity near Dublin’. The college took the former site of a Catholic monastery. Contrary to what you might have expected – given how overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland is – TCD is a Protestant University. It lay originally outside the city walls, and began with two fellows (i.e. teachers). Some forty-five years later there were 16 fellows. The College is actually part of the University of Dublin but since it is the only college, the two entities are virtually the same. In theory, however, new colleges could be added.
Founded in the aftermath of the reformation, Trinity was for a long time a bastion of Protestantism. Catholics were admitted from the foundation of the University, but it would not have been attractive to them. Graduates took an oath of allegiance and often took up religious orders. University College, the Catholic university, was founded in 1854, and only in 1873 did Trinity College abolish its religious oaths. In 1907, Trinity strongly opposed a proposal to add a Catholic college to the University of Dublin, so nothing happened. Proposals to unite TCD and UCD have also failed.
Every day thousands of tourists visit TCD. They come mainly for Trinity’s most famous occupant, the Book of Kells, that masterpiece of Irish art produced sometime in the 8th or 9th century. It lives in the Old Library, which is as much worth seeing as the Book itself. The library dates back to the early 18th century and its most famous part is the Long Room, very long indeed at 213 feet (65 metres) long with some 200,000 books in it. Last year, however, the university began a conservation programme to ensure the safety and survival of the books, so when we visited recently only a fraction of the books were on the shelves. Still, it’s an impressive sight. (The library is a legal deposit library, which means that every book published in Great Britain and Ireland automatically arrives here – some 100,000 items a year!)
Trinity sits right in the centre of Dublin and so it’s fairly compact. Though not so small as to be without a lovely park in the centre, which also serves as a locus for cricket matches. Besides the Old Library, there are many beautiful buildings to see, quite apart from the college grounds themselves. There is the campanile, which sits at the front of Library Square, 100 feet tall (30.5 metres), decorated with the heads of Demosthenes, Homer, Plato, and Socrates. In Library Square you can also see the Rubrics, built around 1700 and the oldest building still standing. Today it serves as student housing. The Chapel, completed in 1798, is certainly worth a visit. It is today an ecumenical building and hosts both Anglican services and Catholic mass. There are, of course, a number of modern buildings, but to our eyes at least, they are not particularly attractive.
As we’ve said, we love a college campus. Trinity College, however, is extremely likeable even if you aren’t the academic sort; locals and tourists alike often come here for walks, visits to the art galleries, and to have a picnic on the grounds.
