History of Dublin City
       is the capital and largest city in Ireland, near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region. Founded as a centre of Viking settlement, the city has been Ireland’s capital since mediæval times.
Dublin’s Ha’penny Bridge
Beyond it, the dome of the 18th century Custom House and Liberty Hall
The city of Dublin is the entire area administered by Dublin City Council. However, when most people talk about ‘Dublin’, they also refer to the contiguous suburban areas that run into the adjacent local authority areas of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. This area is sometimes known as ‘Urban Dublin’ or the ‘Dublin Metropolitan Area’.
The population of the administrative area controlled by Dublin City Council was 505,739 at the census of 2006. At the same census the Dublin Region population was 1,186,159, and the Greater Dublin Area 1,661,185. (estimated by the CSO to reach 2.1 million by 2021).
A person from Dublin is known as a Dubliner or colloquially as a Dub, or, pejoratively, a Jackeen.
In a 2003 European-wide survey by the BBC, questioning 11,200 residents of 112 urban and rural areas, Dublin was the best capital city in Europe to live in, and Ireland the most content country in Europe.
Dublin is the third most visited capital city in Europe (after Paris and London) with over four million visitors a year.
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The name Dublin is an Hiberno-English derivative of ‘Dubh Linn’ (Irish, meaning ‘black pool’). Historically, in the traditional Gaelic script used for the Irish language, ‘bh’ was written with a dot over the ‘b’, viz ‘Du? Linn’ or ‘Du?linn’. The French speaking Normans omitted the dot and spelled the name variously as ‘Develyn’ or ‘Dublin’.
Watch CapitalD an RTÉ News programe about Dublin.
Some sources doubt this derivation, and suggest that ‘Dublin’ is of Scandinavian origin, cf. Icelandic: djúp lind (‘deep pond’). However, the name ‘Dubh Linn’ pre-dates the arrival of the Vikings in Ireland, and the Old Norse (and modern Icelandic) name for Dublin is simply the words ‘Dubh Linn’ re-spelled as if they were Old Norse: ‘Dyflinn’ (correctly pronounced “Duev-linn” — the letter ‘y’ is still pronounced like the vowel in ‘ewe’ in Modern Norwegian, Swedish, etc., just as it was in Old Norse; Icelandic, while keeping the spelling, has changed this sound to /i/).
The common name for the city in Modern Irish is ‘Baile Átha Cliath’ (‘The Settlement of the Ford of the Reed Hurdles’), which refers to the settlement, founded in 988 by High King Mael Sechnaill II, that adjoined the town of Dubh Linn proper at the Black Pool.
Spire of Dublin (on O’Connell Street)
For more information on the history of Dublin City go to Wikipedia the free online encyclopedia.
Formerly the Royal College of Science
The earliest reference to Dublin is sometimes said to appear in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), the Egyptian-Greek astronomer and cartographer, around the year A.D. 140, who refers to a settlement called ‘Eblana’. This would seem to give Dublin a just claim to nearly two thousand years of antiquity, as the settlement must have existed a considerable time before Ptolemy became aware of it. Recently, however, doubt has been cast on the identification of Eblana with Dublin, and the similarity of the two names is now thought to be coincidental.
Beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The Viking settlement of about[[1]] 841 was known as Dyflin, from the Irish Duiblinn (or “Black Pool”, referring to a dark tidal pool where the River Poddle entered the Liffey on the site of the Castle Gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle), and a Gaelic settlement, Áth Cliath (“ford of hurdles”) was further up river.
The Celtic settlement’s name is still used as the Irish name of the modern city, while the modern English name came from the Viking settlement of Dyflin, which derived its name from the Irish Duiblinn. The Vikings, or Ostmen as they called themselves, ruled Dublin for almost three centuries, though they were expelled in 902 only to return in 917 and notwithstanding their defeat by the Irish High King Brian Boru at the battle of Clontarf in 1014.
The River Liffey divides the city
It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duiblinn, from which Dyflin took its name. See Also The Kings of Dublin.
Viking Dublin had a large slave market. Thralls were captured and sold, not only by the Norse but also by warring Irish chiefs.
This nominally ended with the adoption of the Brehon Laws, but actually continued for a further century.
Dublin celebrated its millennium in 1988 with the slogan ‘‘Dublin’s great in ‘88’. The city is far older than that, but in that year, the Norse King Glun Iarainn recognised Mael Seachlainn II Mor (the High King of Ireland), and agreed to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law.
That date was celebrated, but might not be accurate: in 989 (not 988), Mael Seachlainn laid siege to the city for 20 days and captured it. This was not his first attack on the city.
Dublin became the centre of English power in Ireland after the 12th century Norman conquest of the southern half of Ireland (Munster and Leinster), replacing Tara in Meath — seat of the Gaelic High Kings of Ireland — as the focal point of Ireland’s polity. Over time, however, many of the Anglo-Norman conquerors were absorbed into the Irish culture, adopting the Irish language and customs, leaving only a small area around Dublin, known as the Pale, under direct English control.
18th century ducal palace now the seat of parliament
DublinTourist.com : If you are considering a visit to Dublin in the near future then this Website may just have all the information you need, everything from accommodation to car hire and of course including places to visit.
Chapters of Dublin History, 2007