Overview
Walk east from O’Connell Street and Parnell Street changes character within a block or two. The shopfronts turn to Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and other Asian restaurants: the eastern stretch is Dublin’s unofficial Chinatown and Koreatown, and a good place for an inexpensive meal on the north side of the Liffey. If you have an hour on Parnell Street, spend it there rather than in the shopping centre.
The street runs about a kilometre, from Capel Street towards Gardiner Street and Mountjoy Square, forming the south side of Parnell Square a block north of O’Connell Street. It was Great Britain Street until 1 October 1911, when it was renamed for Charles Stewart Parnell. The Parnell Monument at the O’Connell Street junction went up the same year; its sculptor, the Irish-American Augustus Saint-Gaudens, called it ‘the crowning work of my life’.
Where to eat
The first Chinese restaurants here opened decades ago, some of them by people an Irish Dominican nun had encouraged to settle in Dublin; one of the earliest was run by William Wong. That cluster has grown into a proper eating quarter. Kimchi Hophouse serves Korean food at 160–161 Parnell Street, and Pho Kim, near the Ambassador Theatre, serves Vietnamese food including phở. Chinese, Thai and other Asian places fill in between, along with African and Eastern European shops and cafés. Most places are informal, and lunchtime is usually the easiest time to get a table. Check each restaurant’s own menu for current prices and opening hours.
The western end: shops, cinema and theatres
The western half is the commercial end, and the less distinctive of the two. The Ilac Centre, which opened in 1981, anchors the street; its getting here page has current details. Cineworld, on the same stretch, opened as Virgin Cinemas in November 1995; check its site for what is on. Chapters, in the Ivy Exchange, sells new and second-hand books and is worth an unhurried browse. For theatre, the Gate is round the corner on Cavendish Row by the Rotunda Hospital, so check the programme before you go.
The Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square is closed for refurbishment, and Francis Bacon’s studio, normally part of it, is also closed during the works.
A street that was half demolished
The Georgian city still shows through, above all in the Rotunda Hospital. Bartholomew Mosse founded his maternity hospital in 1745 and bought the Parnell Street site in 1748; the hospital moved to this site in 1757 and is still a working maternity hospital. Much of the rest of the street’s older fabric is gone. A 1970s road-widening scheme, the Inner Tangent Road, cleared street after street of Georgian and Victorian buildings, and in 1972 the Noyeks fire on the corner of King’s Inns Street killed eight people. The Ilac Centre rose in 1981 on that cleared ground, over hundreds of demolished buildings and lost laneways such as Little Denmark Street. The eastern end has been rebuilding its character ever since, largely through its restaurants.
Getting there
Parnell Street is a public street, free and open at all hours. Use the Luas Green Line map for the Parnell, O’Connell Upper and Dominick stops, and check the map for the stop in your direction of travel. Connolly and Tara Street stations are both a short walk to the south. If you are driving, the Ilac Centre lists its Q-Park entrance on Parnell Street. From here it is an easy walk to Henry Street, the Spire and, just south, the Abbey Theatre.