Dublin Zones

Hello, after my first introduction post I would like to write a little bit about the different zones or areas of Dublin. As I said before, Dublin is a big city, but it is not the type of cities we have in Galicia or in Spain or in almost all Europe, is more close to the British cities. This means not very tall buildings and almost all the city centre or zones in the city centre only with office buildings. This make no sense from my “european” perspective, I am use to see the heart of the city alive always with people, but in some zones of Dublin this doesn’t happen.

Let’s start with a physical division of the city, the river Liffey, this river divides the city in Dublin North side and the Dublin South side, typically people say the North side is more the working class side and the South side is a more wealthy zone. But there are “bad” zones in the south and very wealthy neighborhoods in the north.

I would define the city centre as the zone between the Grand canal in the south and Dorset Street in the north side, that means more than 2,5 Km large of walking distance and another 2,5 Km wide from the Liberties to the Grand Canal Docks. All inside that area is what I consider the city centre, all in 15 -20 minutes walking distance and not lots of bad zones inside. When I talk about bad zones it doesn’t have to be a dangerous zone or a place if you walk after 8pm you get robbed, but there are zones with bad reputation or places I wouldn’t go after 8 or 9 pm. This doesn’t mean living close to one of this zones is bad, sometimes if you live in the main street you could be safer there than in any other place.

Inside the city centre there are a couple of areas, like Temple Bar, this is the main tourist area, if you want to find an open pub a Monday at 11pm you always can find something there, even live music 7 days a week. Then you have the area of St. Stephen Green park, with the shopping centre, or the Merrion Sq. area with most of the government buildings there. In the north side, where I live, you have the Smithfield area, very nice with a central square and lots of activities, or the Henry St. area with at least 4 shopping centres and all the main shops. This is the main shopping street in the north, there are also a street market with some fruit and vegetables in Moor St. off Henry St.

Outside the city centre you can find very good areas to live or to visit. Like Dun Laoghaire, in the Dart line, this is a well know place to live, a little bit away for me, but very nice and with a very large dock with two big piers. Or closer to the centre, Rathmines, Ranelagh, Donnybrook or Ballsbridge all this areas in the south, just after the canal, very good zones to live and some of them within walking distance to the city centre. There are also some other zones in the north like Phibsborough, Drumcondra or close to the Botanic gardens, all zones with good places to live and cheaper than the south side.

To finish this post I would like to share with you a postal code map of dublin and the areas inside this codes, the postal codes in Dublin are easy to identify, the odd numbers such as 1, 3, 5 ... are postal codes from the North side and the even numbers such 2, 4, 6, 6w ... are from the South Side, and the lower the number closer to the city centre, so you can easily identify that Dublin 4 is closer to the city centre than Dublin 16 and they are in the south side. Here is the wikipedia postal code map.