Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

In March 2012 thieves broke into Christ Church and took one of Ireland's strangest relics: the mummified, 800-year-old heart of St Laurence O'Toole, Dublin's patron saint, kept in an iron cage on the wall. They cut through the cage and left the gold chalices and candlesticks standing beside it, which tells you they knew exactly what they had come for. It was gone for six years. In April 2018 the gardaí recovered it undamaged — reportedly in Phoenix Park, though the Gardaí declined to confirm where — and on 26 April an assistant commissioner handed it back to the Archbishop of Dublin at a service in the cathedral. It is a genuinely modern crime attached to a building that has been standing here, in one form or another, for close to a thousand years — and it is not even the oddest thing in the crypt.

A Viking church, and an Anglo-Norman rebuild

The earliest manuscript puts a church on this site around 1030. It was founded by Sitriuc Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin, with Dúnán, the city's first bishop, and it was probably wooden. Christ Church looked to Canterbury rather than to the Irish church for its first century, and only by 1152 was it brought into the Irish church proper.

Within a decade Laurence O'Toole was archbishop. He reformed the cathedral's constitution along European lines, brought in the canons regular of St Augustine to form a cathedral priory, and put it on the liturgical use of Sarum — Salisbury. He was also a working diplomat: it was O'Toole who negotiated between the Dubliners and the Anglo-Normans under Richard de Clare, Strongbow, after they took the city in 1170.

Here is a correction worth making, because guidebooks and our own earlier version of this page got it wrong. O'Toole did not rebuild the cathedral in stone. He died in 1180, at Eu in Normandy. The rebuilding in Romanesque and then Gothic — the work parts of which you can still see — was driven largely by John Cumin, his successor and the first Anglo-Norman archbishop of Dublin. O'Toole's contribution was the institution; Cumin's was the building.

Kings, pretenders and a collapsed roof

Things happened here. In 1395 Richard II sat in state in this cathedral and received the homage of the kings of the four Irish provinces — O'Neill of Ulster, McMurrough of Leinster, O'Brien of Munster and O'Connor of Connacht. In 1487 the ten-year-old Lambert Simnel, a pretender to Henry VII's throne, was crowned in this building as “Edward VI”, which is about as close as Dublin has come to hosting a coronation.

Henry VIII dissolved the Augustinian priory of the Holy Trinity and refounded it with secular canons; on 22 December 1541 Robert Castle, the last prior, became the first dean. Then, in 1562, the nave roof and vaulting came down. Strongbow's tomb was smashed. The emergency rebuilding that followed was meant to be temporary and lasted until the 1870s — and the north nave wall, pushed out by the collapse, has leaned outwards by 46 centimetres, about 18 inches, ever since. It is still leaning. Stand at the west end and sight along it.

In 1689 James II attended Mass here and the pre-Reformation rites were briefly restored. On 6 July 1690, returning from the Boyne, William III came to give thanks for his victory and presented a set of gold communion plate. Both kings' altar furniture survives, in the same room, a few feet apart.

Why it stands on its own

One thing to understand before you judge the setting. Christ Church was built on the high ground over the Viking settlement at Wood Quay, in the middle of a dense maze of small streets and buildings, and that context is gone: a major dual-carriageway scheme and the demolition of the old residential quarter at Wood Quay in the 1970s and 80s left the cathedral marooned behind the civic offices on the quays. It looks isolated and slightly stranded because it is — the medieval city that explained it was cleared away around it.

It nearly went further than that. The Church Commissioners' report of 1868 proposed making St Patrick's the sole cathedral of Dublin and reducing Christ Church to a parish church. What saved it was money, and specifically one man's.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

Outside: the bridge, and Homeless Jesus

Before going in, walk round to the covered stone bridge that vaults over Winetavern Street. It is Street's, part of the same 1870s scheme, and it linked the cathedral to the Synod Hall — which is now Dublinia, the Viking and medieval Dublin museum, and the reason for the combined ticket. It is the most photographed thing here and it is 150 years old, not 800.

At the west end, on a bench, is a bronze figure lying under a blanket with its face covered. This is Homeless Jesus, by the Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz; there are casts of it in cities around the world, and the way you identify the figure is the wounds in the exposed feet. It has been called the most confronting piece of religious art in Dublin, and it sits directly outside a cathedral that charges €12 to enter, which the cathedral is well aware of.

The nave and the leaning wall

Inside, the nave is high, grey and rather severe, with a medieval tiled floor — the tiles are Street's reproductions of the medieval originals, which he had lifted, recorded and copied. The stone changes colour as you move east; the further east you go, the more of it is genuinely medieval.

And then there is the lean. Sight along the north arcade from the west end and it is unmistakable: the whole wall tips outwards. That is the 1562 collapse, never corrected, only propped, and it is the most honest thing in the building.

Strongbow, who is not there

On the south side of the nave lies a large armoured effigy that every guide and every guidebook calls Strongbow. It is worth being clear about what it is. Richard de Clare, the Earl of Pembroke who led the Anglo-Norman invasion and died in 1176, was buried in this cathedral. His tomb was destroyed in the 1562 collapse. The effigy on show is a contemporary substitute, brought in from Drogheda shortly afterwards so that the cathedral would still have a Strongbow to show — because his tomb was the place where Dublin merchants traditionally settled their debts, and the city needed it back.

Beside it is a smaller half-figure, traditionally said to be his son, cut in half by his father for cowardice in battle. There is no evidence for any of that; it is most likely a fragment of a separate monument. Enjoy the story and do not repeat it as fact.

The heart of St Laurence O'Toole

In the Chapel of St Laud, on the wall, is an iron-caged heart-shaped reliquary holding the heart of Laurence O'Toole, brought to Dublin after his death at Eu in 1180 and here ever since. It was stolen in March 2012 — the thieves cut the cage open and left the gold plate beside it untouched — and was missing for six years before being recovered undamaged in April 2018 and handed back to the Archbishop of Dublin at a service on 26 April. Nobody was ever charged. It is back on the wall.

The crypt

Down the steps, and this is the best part of the visit by a distance. The crypt was built in 1172–73, runs the full length of the cathedral above, and is the largest of its kind in Britain or Ireland. It is also the oldest building still in use in Dublin — older than anything above ground in the city.

It has not always been used for prayer. Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the crypt was a market, a place to do business, and, at one point, a drinking den. A letter of 1633 complains that “the vaults from one end of the minster to the other are made into tippling houses for beer, wine and tobacco.” Under the cathedral. Directly under the floor of the church.

Tom and Jerry

In a case in the crypt are a mummified cat and a mummified rat, dried out and preserved, the cat apparently frozen mid-chase. They were found inside an organ pipe in the 1860s, where the rat had gone to escape and the cat had followed and got stuck; both starved. James Joyce used them in Finnegans Wake — a character is described as being “as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that christchurch organ” — and they have been known as Tom and Jerry ever since. They are, by some distance, the most popular exhibit in the building.

The Treasures of Christ Church

The crypt was restored for the millennium in 2000 and now holds the cathedral's treasury, which is far better than most visitors expect. In it:

• A copy of Magna Carta. Not a fact that appears on most Dublin itineraries.
• The gold plate given by William III in 1697, a thanksgiving for the Boyne.
• The tabernacle and candlesticks used in 1689 under James II, conserved and displayed. Catholic altar furniture from a deposed king, kept safe in an Anglican cathedral, in the same room as the plate of the man who beat him.
• The cathedral's medieval manuscripts and account rolls, including the Liber Albus.
• The stocks from the old cathedral liberty, and civic regalia from the days when the mayor and corporation of Dublin worshipped here.

The bells

There are 20 bells in the tower: 19 swinging bells — the highest number of change-ringing bells anywhere in the world — plus one chiming bell. Seven were added in 1999 to make that up, and the ring is unusual in giving campanologists a choice of three different twelve-bell peals as well as fourteen- and sixteen-bell ones. At the time it was only the second full-circle ring of sixteen in the world, after St Martin-in-the-Bullring in Birmingham; there are now three, the other being the Swan Bells in Perth, Western Australia.

Not everything up there has had an easy time. On 11 March 1597 an accidental gunpowder explosion on one of the quays below damaged the tower and cracked the bells — the same blast damaged St Audoen's tower nearby. Six new bells were cast from cannon metal in 1670.

The point for a visitor is that you can get at them. The guided tour goes up into the belfry and lets you ring, which very few cathedrals anywhere will let an ordinary visitor do. They are also rung for Sunday Sung Eucharist and Choral Evensong, with ringing practice on Friday nights. The catch is that guided tours are English-only and cannot be booked online — ask at the welcome desk on the day.

The music, and Handel

On 13 April 1742 the choirs of Christ Church and St Patrick's sang together at the world premiere of Handel's Messiah, in Neal's Music Hall on Fishamble Street, a few minutes' walk downhill. It was not performed in either cathedral — a point worth making, because it is constantly said otherwise — but the singers came from both, and Christ Church still keeps a full choral foundation. Choral evensong is free.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The leaning north wall Sight along the arcade from the west end. It has tipped out 18 inches since 1562 and nobody has ever put it back.
• Tom and Jerry A mummified cat and rat from an organ pipe, in the crypt, and named in Finnegans Wake.
• The two kings' altar plate James II's candlesticks and William III's gold, in the same treasury, a few feet apart.
• The Magna Carta copy In the crypt treasury, and almost nobody knows Dublin has one.
• The heart of St Laurence O'Toole Back in its iron cage in the Chapel of St Laud after six years missing.
• The belfry Nineteen bells, and on the guided tour you get to ring them.
• Homeless Jesus On a bench outside the west end. Identify him by the feet.
• The covered bridge Over Winetavern Street to Dublinia — 1870s, not medieval, and the best photograph of the cathedral is taken from under it.

Insider tips

Buy online. The prices quoted at the door are the full ones and the cathedral says plainly that booking online is cheaper. It is also a registered charity that receives no state funding, which is the honest answer to anyone grumbling about paying to enter a church.

Do both cathedrals in one walk. St Patrick's is ten minutes away, the two are permanently confused with each other, and seeing them the same morning is the quickest way to sort out which is which: Christ Church is the older and holds the archbishop's seat; St Patrick's is the bigger and is the National Cathedral. Both are Church of Ireland.

The audio guide is genuinely good, and it has three separate themed routes — Power and Politics, Christ Church and the City, and Music and Spirituality — so it is worth deciding which one you want rather than taking the default. There is also a sensory version designed for children and for visitors unfamiliar with churches.

Dublinia, over the bridge, is aimed at families but is not childish; if you have any interest in Viking Dublin it fills in exactly the thousand years of context the cathedral assumes you already have.

Where to stay and eat nearby

Christ Church sits on the ridge between Temple Bar and the Liberties, so you are five minutes from the busiest eating and drinking in Dublin in one direction and from the Guinness Storehouse in the other. There is a great deal of accommodation within a short walk, and the immediate streets are quieter at night than Temple Bar proper.

More Irish churches

• St Patrick's Cathedral — ten minutes' walk, the National Cathedral, Swift's church, and restored by a Guinness.
• Rock of Cashel — the medieval ecclesiastical capital of Munster, and a cathedral unroofed on purpose.
• Skellig Michael — the opposite end of Irish monasticism: a rock in the Atlantic.
• Kylemore Abbey — a Victorian castle turned Benedictine abbey in Connemara.

See all the Irish churches in this guide →