Casino of Marino
Neoclassical garden pavilion of hidden rooms and trick facades, built as an eighteenth-century folly.
This guide to the Casino of Marino in Dublin begins at a door with four panels, only two of which actually open, the first clue that this small garden folly hides sixteen rooms behind a deceptive facade. You'll hear how James Caulfeild, first Earl of Charlemont, returned from years touring Italy and Greece and hired the Scottish architect William Chambers to spend some seventeen years turning that obsession into stone, and how ordinary features like roof urns and porch columns were built to do real, hidden work. The guide also follows the house into the twentieth century, when a servants' tunnel beneath it found an unexpected new use.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.