Kilmainham Gaol, Prison museum in Dublin, Ireland
Kilmainham Gaol is a former prison in Kilmainham, Dublin, opened in 1796 as the County of Dublin Gaol and now a museum run by the Office of Public Works. Its main hall has a ground floor, one upper gallery and a domed roof with a glazed lantern at the centre, supported by slender metal columns and thin walkways. A straight metal staircase with open treads rises to a bridge crossing the hall between the galleries.
The prison opened in 1796 and remained in operation until 1924. It held many political prisoners during the 1916 Easter Rising and other events of the Irish independence movement.
Visitors walk through spaces where people held for fighting for independence became figures of national memory. Exhibits show personal objects, letters and photographs from those who resisted and whose time here turned them into symbols of struggle.
Access is available only through guided tours that must be booked in advance on the official website. Tickets are typically released 28 days before the visit date.
The prison yard where the 1916 leaders were shot is not the Stonebreakers' Yard alone: the first four Republican prisoners executed by the Free State government during the Civil War were also shot in the prison yard. The German source lists the fourteen Easter Rising executions by date, from Patrick Pearse on 3 May 1916 to James Connolly on 12 May 1916.
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