GPO Museum

Located in Dublin’s iconic General Post Office, the GPO Museum offers an immersive experience into Ireland’s history, from the 1916 Easter Rising to modern times.

Planning your visit

The GPO is where modern Ireland began. On Easter Monday 1916 a few hundred volunteers seized the General Post Office on Sackville Street, and Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from its steps. The building was shelled to a shell over six days of fighting; the rising failed militarily, the leaders were executed, and the executions turned public opinion decisively toward independence. The columns outside still carry bullet damage.

The museum inside covers that week and what followed — the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Civil War that split the independence movement, and on into the Troubles — using film, projections, artefacts and a copy of the Proclamation itself. It is an immersive presentation rather than an object-led one, and it handles the contested aspects of the period, including the Civil War, more evenly than older accounts did.

The GPO remains a working post office, which gives the building an unexpected ordinariness around the history.

Bookable options include entry tickets, skip-the-line tickets bundled with walking tours covering the 1916 sites around the city, and tours tracing the longer republican history through Dublin's streets. The walking formats work well because the Rising was fought across a small area still recognisable today. Current availability is shown below.