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Built in 1856, the National Museum of Ireland - Natural History is a magnificent Victorian artefact in its own right. Sometimes described as ‘a museum of a museum’, it houses a wide-ranging and comprehensive zoological collection of more than 10,000 exhibits. Visitors can explore Irish mammals, birds, fish and insects, as well as mammals ...
The National Museum of Ireland – Natural History (Irish: Ard-Mhúsaem na hÉireann – Stair an Dúlra), sometimes called the Dead Zoo, [2][3][4] a branch of the National Museum of Ireland, is housed on Merrion Street in Dublin, Ireland. The museum was built in 1856 for parts of the collection of the Royal Dublin Society and the building and ...
Built in 1856, the National Museum of Ireland - Natural History is a magnificent Victorian artefact in its own right. Sometimes described as ‘a museum of a museum’, it houses a wide-ranging and comprehensive zoological collection of more than 10,000 exhibits. Visitors can explore Irish mammals, birds, fish and insects, as well as mammals ...
- 'Museum of A Museum'
- Design and Building
- Expansion in 1877
- New Entrance in 1909
- Statue of Thomas Heazle Parke
- Re-Opening in 2010
The building is a ‘cabinet-style’ museum designed to showcase a wide-ranging and comprehensive zoological collection, and has changed little in over a century. Often described as a ‘museum of a museum’, its 10,000 exhibits provide a glimpse of the natural world that has delighted generations of visitors since the doors opened in 1857. The building ...
The building was designed by architect Frederick Clarendon to be in harmony with the planned National Gallery of Ireland on the other side of Leinster Lawn. The foundation stone was laid on 15 March 1856 and the building was completed in August 1857 by contractors Gilbert Cockburn & Son. It formed an annexe to Leinster House and was connected to it...
In 1877, ownership of the Museum and its collections was transferred to the state. New funding was provided for the building, and new animals were added from an expanding British empire during the great days of exploration.
In 1909, a new entrance was constructed at the east end of the building facing Merrion Street. This reversed the direction from which visitors approached the exhibitions and explains why some of the large exhibits still face what appears today to be the back of the building: it was too difficult to turn the whales and elephants around to face the n...
A statue of Victorian surgeon and explorer, Thomas Heazle Parke, stands guard at the front of the Natural Building building. Parke acted as surgeon to an expedition led by Henry Morton Stanley in 1887. The expedition crossed Africa on an 8,000 kilometre journey up the Congo and through the Ituri rainforest before reaching Lake Albert.
In April 2010, the Museum reopened after restoration works that included the reinstatement of the grand stone staircase, open to the public for the first time since 2007. There is now a ramp to the front door and a wheelchair accessible toilet. The Discovery Zone allows visitors to handle taxidermy and bones. The Reading Area, at first floor level,...
Although the R. cramptoni specimen used to stand in the Fossil Hall of the Natural History Museum in Dublin, this building was sadly demolished in 1962 to make way for a restaurant and bar for the Dáil (the Irish Parliament), so R. cramptoni was consigned to storage and awaits some much needed TLC.
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National Museum of Ireland – Natural History, Merrion Street opened in 1857 as the museum of the Royal Dublin Society the ‘Natural History Museum’ has developed as a cabinet style zoological museum with animals from all over the world.
