IRELAND: TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

 July 12, 2024

Bob and I like to visit famous universities. We've been to most of the biggies in the United States (Think Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, etc.), and we've been to a few overseas (Think University of Heidelberg in Germany, University of Coimbra in Portugal, Oxford and Cambridge in England, Trinity College in Toronto, etc.).  We were excited to add Trinity College Dublin (aka University of Dublin) to our list.  

We started with a guided walking tour of the campus. Modelled after Oxford and Cambridge, Trinity was founded in 1592 by England's Queen Elizabeth I and is now home to 19,000 students. One of Trinity's specialties is English literature, and its program is ranked #1 in the European Union and 21st in the world. Literary luminaries who are alumni include Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. Four Presidents of Ireland and four Nobel Laureates are alumni.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) is engrossed in his book and hardly notices the many visitors who walk by him near the entrance.  George Salmon (1819-1904), a mathematician and a theologian who was also the college provost for a time, famously said, "Over my dead body will women enter this college." Maybe he felt that way because he had six daughters and Trinity College was the only place he could go to get away from them.

The iconic Campanile was being renovated when we were there.

The Museum Building was my second-favorite building on the campus (after the Old Library, coming up later). Finished in 1857, it has Byzantine-style architecture and highlights local craftsmanship and materials.

The carved stone here and elsewhere on the campus is exquisite. There are over 108 intricately carved capitals in the Museum Building and lots of other carved ornaments.

I had read about Connemara marble, the national gemstone of Ireland, before the trip and was excited to see it used in this building. It is a rare green marble mined only in Ireland, and I was on the hunt for a piece of jewelry featuring a chunk of it.

They also had a skeleton of an extinct Irish deer that was about the size of a horse.

Even at Trinity College we could not get away from the Guinness domination of Ireland. Here is Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927), head of the family's brewery and at one time the richest man in Ireland. I believe he sponsored the building of this museum. His estate was worth over a billion dollars at the time of his death.

Back outside, I was captivated by this lumpy tree known as a "plane tree." The campus is an arborist's dream world.

An iconic artwork, Sphere Within Sphere, is one of a series of 45 bronze sculptures created by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro. They range in size from a half meter to four meters in diameter. The work symbolizes the emergence of a new world from the old. (The seagull on top was trying to steal the show.)

The big tourist draw at Trinity College is the Book of Kells Experience, an exhibit of illuminated manuscripts of the four Gospels of the New Testament that dates to 800 AD. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment. Only one two-page spread of the book, which is displayed in a glass case, is ever on view, and the day we were there did not have a particularly glamorous spread. The lead-up to the book, which showed enlargements of various pages and explained key features of the illustrations, was much more interesting than the real thing.

The Book of Kells was written in Latin on vellum (calfskin) paper. This is a reproduction of the portrait of the Apostle John seated on a throne and marks the beginning of his Gospel.

This is a reproduction of the Chi Rho page, one of the most famous images in the Book of Kells. The Greek words "Chi Rho" refer to Christ.

There was also a lot of information about The Book of Armagh, another 9th century illuminated manuscript  containing early texts related to Saint Patrick, significant portions of the New Testament, and the Life of Saint Martins of Tours. In its early centuries, many believed it was written, at least in part, by Saint Patrick himself, but that has been disproved.

For me, the best part of the Book of Kells Experience was the Old Library, which was built between 1712 and 1732. The main chamber, called the Long Room, is 213 feet (65 meters) long and usually holds 200,000 very old rare books. However, when we visited, many of the books had been temporarily removed while conservation protections are put in place. The books will each be cleaned with a specialized vacuum and fully catalogued, and then placed in a climate-controlled facility until they can be returned to these shelves.

However, there were still many, many books on the shelves, and it's no surprise that this is considered one of the greatest libraries in the world. At the end of the long hall (the perfect view for a lesson on perspective) is the artwork Gaia by Luke Jerram, featuring a very detailed NASA imagery of the earth. In Greek mythology, the goddess Gaia is the personification of the Earth, often referred to as "Mother Earth."  The 20-foot diameter floating sphere gives one a feeling of awe, perhaps a bit like what astronauts feel upon their first glimpse of Earth from space. The planet's dual power and fragility compliments the library nicely, and walking towards it down the long corridor is a spiritual experience.

And on either side of that long walk, there are thousands of books that are repositories of centuries of thought.

And in front of the books are the philosophers and writers and thinkers upon whose ideas many of the books are based.

Homer and Socrates:

Plato and Aristotle:

Cicero and Sir Isaac Newton:

 

Oliver Goldsmith and Robert Boyle:

John Milton and Francis Bacon:

John Locke and Mary Wollstonecraft (striking a particularly dramatic pose and the only woman featured that I noticed):

And, of course, William Shakespeare, who seems to be looking at a shelf of books. I didn't check to see if they were perhaps his plays:

Design touches like this airy spiral staircase create a sense of magic. I'd love to explore this library when there are no other people and especially no guards around.

Rotating displays are placed in the center aisle. I loved this 1990 facsimile of Matthew I-III in the Book of Kells. The placard on the display reads: "The birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea. The wise men offer gifts and the children are killed. Return of Jesus from Egypt to Nazareth."

There was also a display of illustrations from children's books that I particularly liked. On the left is Saint Brigid, the mother saint of Ireland and, along with Patrick and Columba, one of its three national saints.  The illustration by Kathleen Verschoyle is from the 1920s. I love the mother's prayer on the right. The illustration is by Beatrice Elvery and is also from the 1920s. The text is by Winnifred M. Letts, who coincidentally was married to a man by the last name of Verschoyle, the last name of the Saint Brigid artist. I wish I knew the connection.

My favorite of the illustrations is this 1910s drawing of a balloon rainbow by Mary Cottenham Yeats, who was the sister-in-law of the famous author W. B. Yeats.

And this silk thread embroidery was made by Lily Yeats, the sister of W. B. Yeats. The fingers of the Yeats family stretch all over Ireland!

And finally, the Old Library is the home of the Brian Boru Harp, the oldest surviving Irish harp and the model for the national symbol of Ireland that is found on Irish currency, its passports, and official seals, as well as being the symbol of the Irish president.

So yes, go to Trinity College Dublin and tour its campus and see its museum and visit the Book of Kells Experience, but don't miss the Old Library, the best of the best.

And of course, there are always birds. Bob, I include this photo of Trinity College gulls for you.