By Quinn Baumeister

Fergan Keane wrote in a BBC travel article in 2012 that “Poems, plays, novels and stories inhabit the personality of Dublin in a way that I have never encountered in another city.” Dublin is itself unique in its pride of it literary heritage. There are few places you can go in the city without seeing a reference to different writers or their works, from pub names to street names – and that doesn’t even include the cultural exhibits and tourist attractions that are based wholly on the literary history of Ireland.

The Dublin Writers Museum was established in 1991 to become a single point in Irish literary history. Inside, the rooms are full of the belongings and publications of dozens of Irish writers. The small Georgian house holds a wealth of knowledge about the history of Irish literature and the writers who shaped it.

The Yeats exhibit in the National Library opened in 2006 and was only supposed to be open for a few years. But to this day, the Yeats exhibit still attracts crowds to the library.

One of the most unique and popular literary attractions in Dublin is the Literary Pub Crawl. The Pub Crawl begins at The Duke’s Pub, where two tour guides take the group to several pubs around Dublin. There are around 10 to 12 pubs in rotation for the tour, but each group only goes to about four each night, making the crawl a dynamic experience that people can tour again and again, hitting different pubs each time.

“There is a text to it, but the fun and the trick of it is that everyone has their own twist to it,” said Kevin C. Olohan, a tour guide for the Literary Pub Crawl. All the tour guides are actors who take the group around, performing works from some of Dublin’s famous writers.

“It’s a lot like stand-up or theater,” Olohan said. “There’s a big response factor that is always fun to work with.”

“The challenge is making it engaging and authentic,” said Finbarr Doyle, another tour guide. “Sometimes you get groups that laugh immediately, but you have to kind of twist your performance if the audience doesn’t react how you expect them too.”

But why is a city so fascinated with old books and poetry?

“I think it’s due to the fact that for a long, long time, when Ireland was under rule of an oppressive regime … storytelling became the way of preserving the culture,” Doyle said.

Ireland spent most of their time as a country under other rulers, first with the Normans and then England. During those times, Irish language was forbidden to speak, but despite this, the language endured through those times of oppression and still remains the country’s national language, appearing on traffic signs and official documents and throughout the country. It is also taught in schools and some radio broadcasts are offered in Gaelic.

“A lot of Irish Celtic language and history was preserved through storytelling,” Doyle said.

The friendly pub culture in Ireland goes hand and hand with the storytelling.

“A lot of it is also encouraged by the pub culture in Ireland,” Olohan said. “The history of sitting in bars and talking to each other … this pub culture isn’t nearly as big other places outside of Ireland.”

Doyle said the Irish don’t pass up the opportunity to tell a story.

“We love a good story,” Doyle said. “You go up to someone and say, ‘What you do last night?’ and they reply, ‘Oh man, wait ‘till I tell you.”

The Pub Crawl, Dublin Writers Museum, and Yeats exhibit are only a few literary attractions in Dublin and some of the more formal ones. In many pubs, there are pictures of James Joyce and allusions to Brendan Behan. Many bridges and street names are named after famous Irish writers. Dublin loves its writers. It is a city built on words; its streets are paved with poetry.

And Dublin is beloved among the its writers as well. In the words of James Joyce, “When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.”