The National Maritime Museum of Ireland

The National Maritime Museum of Ireland is a museum in the port city of Dún Laoghaire in County Dublin. The city’s number 1 attraction, the museum presents a comprehensive exhibition on the history of the Irish navy, from merciless naval battles to the terrible shipwrecks suffered by Ireland in recent centuries… A fascinating museum that tells you a lot about the Irish relationship with the sea!

Visit the National Maritime Museum of Ireland

A museum dedicated to man’s passionate love of the ocean

The museum is located on the quayside of Dún Laoghaire harbor, in a former church that once served as a place of prayer for Irish sailors.

Open since 1978, the National Maritime Museum of Ireland offers a comprehensive overview of the history of man and the sea. The program includes tales of historic naval battles between the Irish and the British and then the French, eyewitness accounts of terrible shipwrecks, a presentation of the artisanal fishing practices so dear to the Irish, and how Ireland’s existing lighthouses work… In short: everything you need to understand the passionate relationship between the Irish and the ocean!

The museum’s setting is magical: the church’s stained glass windows and wooden roof add a special charm to the museum’s collections, and you can easily lose track of time between the different themes explored within the building.

We especially recommend that you don’t miss any of the museum’s major exhibitions. These are fascinating, and should give you information on a whole host of different topics concerning the sea! We also recommend the ones on :

Irish lighthouses (technical innovations and the precarious lives of lighthouse keepers),
the SS Great Eastern, a warship commanded by Captain Robert Halpin,
objects belonging to the RMS Leinster, a ship torpedoed in 1918 near Dún Laoghaire, killing 500 people,
the various Irish warships during the Second World War,
the different uniforms of the Irish navy, from the 16th century to the present day.

In short, this tour will plunge you into the heart of an unsuspected maritime and historical universe! This site is one of our favourites!