Dublin’s neo-classical Customs House is celebrating its new life as a visitor center and history site, a hundred years after it was burnt and rebuilt and 230 years after it became Ireland’s trade gateway to the world.
Among the new exhibitions in the building are ones on the history of the building itself and its role in Ireland’s economy and history, as well as of the 20th-century struggles first against British rule and then between Irish forces in the Civil War. It was during that war that the building was attacked and burned.
When it was completed in 1791 after ten years of construction, it was considered one of Europe’s finest neo-classical buildings. At the re-opening ceremony, a government minister said that “The opening, during the Centenary year of the burning of the Custom House, will be really significant for Dublin’s North Inner City and we hope to offer a very informative and very interesting visitor attraction.”
In the years after its reconstruction, the building took on new roles, because the port whose taxes it collected moved further downstream. Most recently, it housed the Local Government Board for Ireland.
