St Patrick's Cathedral

This guide to St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin opens in 1492, inside a locked chapter house where a group of men crouch in the dark, certain that opening the door means being cut down, while an earl outside asks them to make peace. You'll hear what Gerald FitzGerald, head of the powerful Kildare family, chose to do about that locked door rather than walk away, and how the gesture gave Dubliners a phrase they still use today. The guide also turns to the cathedral's longtime dean, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, buried at the west end beside his closest friend under an epitaph he wrote himself. That scarred door still stands a short walk from here, in the north transept.