Dublin audio guide: the stories of its sights

Imagine signing a lease that runs for 9,000 years.

That is exactly what Arthur Guinness did for the brewery site at St James's Gate in Dublin, and a copy of that lease lies at the base of the atrium in the Guinness Storehouse. The Storehouse is a museum in the heart of the St James's Gate Brewery. It tells the 250-year history of the beer called Guinness and of the brewery that makes it. It opened in 2000, and since then it has welcomed more than 20 million visitors.

The ground floor introduces Arthur Guinness himself, the founder of the brewery. And the archive holds records and objects reaching all the way back to 1759. So the story here runs from one man's very long lease to a beer known far beyond Ireland. Today, the visit ends high up. On the seventh floor you will find the Gravity Bar, with views over Dublin.

And most admission tickets include a pint of Guinness in the price, so you can enjoy it up there with the city spread out around you.

In 1907, the Irish Crown Jewels were stolen from Dublin Castle, and they have never been found.

Dublin Castle stands in the centre of Dublin. Until 1922 it was the seat of the British government's administration in Ireland. It began as a Norman castle. From the late 17th century onward, most of it was rebuilt as a Georgian palace. It was inside this seat of power that the jewels vanished. Suspicion fell upon the Officer of Arms, Sir Arthur Vicars.

Yet the jewels themselves never turned up again. Today the castle is an Irish government complex, a conference centre and a tourist attraction. Saint Patrick's Hall holds the most significant painted ceiling in Ireland, the work of Vincenzo Valdre. And on the evening of 18 May 2011, the state dinner welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland was held here, hosted by the President of Ireland.

For 100 years, anyone who crossed the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin had to pay, and the man who collected the money was never meant to build a bridge at all.

He was William Walsh, and he ran the ferries across the River Liffey. They were in bad condition. He was told he had two choices: fix them, or build a bridge instead. He built the bridge. It is a pedestrian bridge of cast iron, cast in Shropshire, in England, and it opened in May 1816. In return, Walsh won the right to charge a halfpenny toll for 100 years.

That was no random sum. It matched what the ferries had charged before. There was a catch, too. If the people of Dublin found the bridge and its toll objectionable within the first year, it would be taken away at no cost to the city. It stayed. The toll rose for a time to a penny and a halfpenny, and was finally dropped in 1919. Today the bridge links the Temple Bar district with Bachelor's Walk, and it is one of the most photographed sights in Dublin.

Many people call it the city's landmark. For its 200th birthday, a procession crossed it, a fitting tribute to a bridge that began as a ferryman's problem.

Every year, more than 100,000 new titles land on the shelves of Trinity College in Dublin, and nobody has to buy a single one of them.

The library simply has a right to them. Trinity is Ireland's oldest university. Queen Elizabeth I founded it in 1592 with a royal charter. It stands on the site of a former Augustinian priory, just southeast of the old city walls. Here is how the books keep arriving. The library is legally entitled to a copy of every book published in Great Britain and Ireland.

That is where those 100,000 or so new items a year come from. Three million of the books are kept in a depository in Santry, known as the Stacks. The most famous book of all is the Book of Kells. The Old Library, which holds it, is Dublin's second-most visited tourist destination. Today the campus draws over two million visitors a year. Yet it stays calm, even in the middle of a capital city, because the buildings face inwards.

Within the grounds you will also find the Douglas Hyde Gallery, which shows contemporary art, and the Samuel Beckett Theatre, with its festival programme.