Trinity Long Room
Vaulted eighteenth-century library hall lined with ancient books, marble busts and a medieval harp.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Trinity Long Room opens in March 1969, when someone walked out carrying a small wooden harp, and it took the guards hours to notice it was gone. You'll hear about that harp itself, carved from oak and willow with twenty-nine brass strings, long called Brian Boru's harp after the warrior king who united much of Ireland a thousand years ago, and why one nineteenth-century scholar called the legend a clumsy forgery. The guide follows the object's stranger true afterlife, from euro coins and Irish passports to a certain brewery's pint glass, trademarked first in 1876. Look for the case near the end of the room where it sits today.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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