
The Mansion House
Domed round hall built in weeks for a king, later home to a revolutionary parliament.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Mansion House in Dublin opens at a grand 1821 banquet for King George the Fourth, when the staff ran short-handed and the Lord Mayor himself picked up a soup tureen to serve the king, who then stood up and, breaking every rule of protocol, served soup right back. It traces the round room where that happened, rushed up in weeks by the architect John Semple for the royal visit, and the older house built in 1710 by developer Joshua Dawson that still surrounds it. A century later, that same room hosted a very different gathering.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Leinster House
Georgian ducal townhouse whose facade shaped the White House, now Ireland's parliament building.
Áras an Uachtaráin
White-porticoed neoclassical mansion set in parkland, home to Ireland's head of state since 1938.
The Custom House
Neoclassical eighteenth-century riverside landmark rebuilt after a five-day fire during the War of Independence.
Dublin Castle
Medieval fortress and former seat of British rule, its towers and state rooms surrendered to Irish hands in nineteen twenty-two.
Four Courts
Neoclassical courthouse with a soaring domed Round Hall, rebuilt after 1922 civil-war shelling destroyed its archives.
An Post, General Post Office
Grand post office whose columns still bear bullet scars from a nineteen-sixteen uprising.