(CNN) – With St. Patrick’s Day a global phenomenon and Irish pubs found everywhere from Peru to Lanzarote, it can be easy to think that you have something to do without visiting Ireland, especially if you’re one of the 70 million people around the world. Huh. who can claim Irish heritage.
However, to get a real feel of the modern energy of this small island nation, you need to travel, and most people start their journey on the streets of Dublin.
It is a compact, walkable capital city, with its low-rise skyline and man-made Georgian granite landmark.
You can follow the Liffey River through Phoenix Park in the west and the newly rejuvenated docklands in the east, from the Guinness Storehouse, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Dublin Castle, through the city center to the Kilmenham Gaol.
Standing on Butte Bridge, you can see old and new: traditional Dublin represented by Neoclassical custom houses, and beyond, new towers of finance and sweeps of cranes make it even bigger.
The Liffey River runs through the center of Dublin.
Courtesy Gareth McCormack
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Designed by the same award-winning team as Belfast’s Titanic Museum, it tells the stories of the ten million or more people who have migrated from Ireland over the centuries, from religious persecution to conflict to famine to economic need. reason.
They traveled through Britain, the United States, Australia and beyond, building railroads and agricultural frontiers.
They brought their culture with them, telling the story of ambassadors to their new nations, and creating a new Irish mythology abroad. They and their descendants are the expatriates that museums like EPIC want to attract, and in 2013 an Irish tourism initiative, The Gathering, was dedicated to just this audience.
Tearful goodbyes and anticipated returns have become part of the national identity, with arrivals areas at its airports filled with billboards aimed at migrants hungry for Brennan’s bread and Tayto’s crunchy.
music and dance
Cobblestone in Smithfield is the city’s top venue for live traditional music.
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Ireland is best known for its cultural exports, of course, pubs, but in pandemic-hit Ireland, many were forced to close for good.
“Believe it or not, being the capital of this country, there aren’t many places you can really go and connect with that aspect of our culture on a daily basis,” said Thomas Mulligan, whose father Tom Smithfield Pub for 30 years. , before and turned it into the live music hub it is today.
The revival of Irish traditional music went mainstream in the 1960s, marking a new national pride in this still young nation, marking 100 years of independence this year.
From “Danny Boy” (written by an Englishman) to “The Fields of Athenry”, Ireland’s most famous folk songs are tales of exile and longing, while the now popular standard “She Moves Through the Fair” was a lost classic that only Later rediscovered in America became popular again in Ireland.
Likewise, country music is so popular in Ireland, it has its own subgenres: Country ‘n’ Irish. Riverdance was also an Irish-American global phenomenon born in Chicago.
literary tradition
Modernity and change have changed a lot here, but it has not changed the parts of Dublin life that make up this city, and the institutions on which it developed and still rests.
Trinity College, founded in 1592, is the oldest surviving university in Ireland. The Brian Borough Harp, Ireland’s oldest and the model for the country’s insignia, is held in the splendid Long Room Library at Trinity College, which is also home to the ninth-century evangelical manuscript “The Book of Kells”.
Richard Quest meets James Joyce impersonator John Chevlin (left) at Bevley’s Cafe.
Ireland prides itself on its storytelling traditions: it has produced four Nobel Literature Prize winners – WB Yeats, GB Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney – although all reached the end of their lives on foreign shores.
Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, two of Ireland’s most famous writers, were exiled and exiled in their time for what was then regarded as public decency.
Francis Bacon, the pioneering Anglo-Irish artist of contemporary art, left Ireland for England in his teens: an openly gay man was not readily accepted in his society at a time when it was illegal on both islands. homeland for most of his life.
But like Wilde and Joyce, he was posthumously embraced. The entire contents of his artist’s studio were acquired by Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery, where they were reassembled in the same way that Bacon was creating his famous artworks. It’s one of the city’s best kept secrets, and the best part is that admission is free.
swimming in the sea
Although Joyce spent most of his life in mainland Europe, his greatest work, the modernist classic “Ulysses” – which also celebrates its 100th anniversary this year – is an odyssey after a man, a love letter to his home town. . , Leopold Bloom, on a day trip around Dublin.
The opening scenes of the novel take place on a Martello Tower on the beach in the southern suburb of Sandykov, now a James Joyce museum and pilgrimage site for fans who celebrate Bloomsday on 16 June each year.
The area is a popular bathing spot, with sea swimming becoming increasingly popular since the pandemic hit.
Celebrities are joining in too. Harry Styles was seen taking a dip in the nearby Vico Bath this week, following in the footsteps of Matt Damon, who appeared there in 2020 when he and his family were in the area amid the COVID lockdown.
CNN joins local group The Ripple Effect for a morning swim in the 40-foot province.
Member Katie Clarke explains, “A lot of people couldn’t get indoors during the lockdown, so a lot of people started joining outside.” “It was a good place to come and rediscover the ocean.”
As for the group’s name, fellow member Mandy Lacy says, “Irish people love to help people! It’s in our nature. I think The Ripple Effect is an Irish thing. It’s part of our history. Meditation.” We go through tough times, go through good times, everyone is there to really support each other.”
Sea swimming is becoming increasingly popular.
those who stayed, those who left
Earlier this year British filmmaker Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for “Belfast,” a semi-autobiographical film about his Northern Irish childhood before a 30-year struggle known as The Troubles. Due to which his family had to flee to England. It ends with dedication: “For those who stayed. For those on the go. And for all those who were lost.”
But centuries ago, taking a vacation often meant permanent exile, now it’s a door that swings both ways.
Many Irish expatriates, re-evaluating their priorities in the wake of the pandemic, have returned home to new lives with their young families. And as has always been the case, returnees bring in expertise and knowledge acquired abroad, which can help their country flourish.
In 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote, and is now far from being the homogeneous Catholic country of the popular imagination. This country of migrants has also prospered in recent decades with inward migration. There is a new belief in this modern, rapidly growing multicultural Ireland.
Ireland has changed a lot since being hailed as the “Celtic Tiger” at the turn of this century. What followed was a decade or more of enormous economic growth and great optimism. Now, like the rest of the world, Ireland is seeking its post-pandemic purpose.
But, as history has shown, this small, young nation can do this by looking first at each other, then at the world.