Glasnevin and Drumcondra

A city of the dead that tells the story of the living

Glasnevin Cemetery was founded in 1832 by Daniel O’Connell, who campaigned for a non-denominational burial ground in Ireland after Catholic law forbade priests from performing rites at Protestant graveyards. The result is the country’s largest cemetery, with around 1.5 million burials across 50 hectares, and a roll-call of notable graves that amounts to a who’s who of modern Irish history.

Visiting Glasnevin is not a morbid exercise. It is one of the most direct ways to understand 200 years of Irish politics, religion, sport and culture, told through the lives of people who are buried here in identifiable graves that you can stand beside. The quality of the guided tours is high, and the cemetery’s own museum is a genuinely good historical exhibition.

Who is buried here

The grave of Daniel O’Connell — “the Liberator,” the politician who won Catholic Emancipation — lies under a round tower that is a Glasnevin landmark. Michael Collins, the IRA leader and chief negotiator of the Anglo-Irish Treaty who was killed in an ambush in 1922, is here. Éamon de Valera, who opposed Collins over the Treaty and later became both Taoiseach and President, is buried nearby. The proximity is loaded.

The leaders of the 1916 Rising who were executed at Kilmainham Gaol and died in the years that followed are largely buried in a Republican Plot near the O’Connell monument. Roger Casement, the British diplomat and Irish nationalist executed for treason in 1916, was repatriated here in 1965 after state burial at Westminster.

Others in the cemetery include Brendan Behan (playwright and IRA member), Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, and Christy Ring (the Cork hurler, widely considered the greatest GAA player of any era). The breadth of the roll-call reflects what kind of institution this is — not just a political monument but a genuine national burial ground.

The guided tours

The Glasnevin Cemetery guided tours run daily and are the best way to visit for anyone who wants the historical context properly laid out. Guides navigate the graves with a clear narrative arc, covering the cemetery’s foundation, the political history of Ireland as reflected in who is buried here and why, and the social history of Dublin’s working class in the Victorian and early twentieth-century sections.

The “Dead Interesting” tour (also available via GetYourGuide) is a lighter, more anecdote-driven version aimed at visitors who want the stories without the full history lecture. Both are around 90 minutes.

The cemetery’s own staff-led tours tend to be stronger than third-party guides who include Glasnevin as one stop on a broader tour. If this is the primary reason you are visiting the northside, book the cemetery’s own tour.

The Glasnevin Museum

The Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, adjacent to the main gate on the Finglas Road side, holds a permanent exhibition on the history of the cemetery and the people buried here, with particular focus on the Famine period and the revolutionary era. The exhibition is well produced, with a strong genealogy section that reflects the cemetery’s role as a research resource.

The museum also holds Ireland’s most comprehensive burial records, and the online database at glasnevintrust.ie allows visitors to search for specific graves before they arrive — particularly useful for anyone visiting with a genealogical purpose.

Getting there

Glasnevin is about three kilometres north of the city centre. The most direct bus route is the 40 from O’Connell Street (stop by the Gresham Hotel), which runs frequently and takes about twenty minutes to the cemetery gates. Buses 4, 9 and 13 also serve the area. There is no DART or Luas connection.

The Gravedigger pub — formally John Kavanagh’s — sits directly opposite the cemetery gates on the Finglas Road. It is a genuinely old pub (opened 1833, contemporary with the cemetery itself) with a no-music, no-television policy and a reputation for well-poured Guinness. It is worth visiting for its own sake and makes a natural endpoint to a cemetery visit.

Pairing Glasnevin with the 1916 story

The most focused historical day in Dublin combines Glasnevin in the morning with the GPO Museum on O’Connell Street at midday and Kilmainham Gaol in the afternoon. This is a long but coherent day — covering the Rising, the execution, and the burial in sequence. It requires an early Kilmainham booking (weeks in advance) and comfortable shoes; the distances are manageable by bus and taxi.

For a less intensive version, pair Glasnevin Cemetery with the EPIC Museum at Dublin Docklands — both are about Irish identity and history, both are north of the Liffey, and together they give a full day of substantial content without requiring the advance planning that Kilmainham demands.

The 1916 Easter Rising guide and the Glasnevin Cemetery guide both contain more detail on individual graves and the history of the site.