Phoenix Park, Dublin

Phoenix Park, Dublin

On the Thursday of our project week in Dublin, we went to the Phoenix Park. It is an urban park, located north to the river Liffey, two to four kilometres west of the city centre. Around the park there’s a eleven kilometre long perimeter wall which encloses a 707 hectares big area. This makes the Phoenix Park one of the largest walled city parks in Europe. Inside the park you will come across large areas of grassland, tree-lined avenues and since the 17th. Century the park has been home to a herd of wild fallow deer.

At this park we got an introduction about gaelic sports activities, such as hurling and gaelic football. This is the main sport on a national level in Ireland which enjoys nationwide popularity ahead of soccer and rugby.

We were practicing next to the Wellington Monument. It is an 62 metres tall obelisk, the largest in Europe, and it’s situated at the southeast end of the Phoenix Park. It would have been even higher if the public funding had not run out.

This monument was designed by Robert Smirke, an English architect in commemoration of the victories of the Duke of Wellington. There are four bronze plaques cast from cannons captured at the Battle of Waterloo. Three of them have pictorial representations of Wellington's career and the fourth has an inscription at the base of the obelisk.

Also noteworthy about the park is that it hosts the third oldest zoo in the world. It is one of Dublin’s main attractions because it houses more than 700 animals and tropical birds from around the world.

In the park itself you can also find beside many animals about 350 plant species and three of these were even rare and protected. There are also several brooks and tributaries of the River Liffey, and 30% of the area is covered with trees.

We had chosen the Phoenix Park because we were more interested in the Irish nature than in historical item of Dublin and we wanted to discover how the Irish people escape the trouble of the city.

First we wanted to visit the two lakes in the east but then we saw that they were included into the zoo so we weren’t able to explore them, because we hadn’t enough money with us to enter it. Afterwards we decided to walk around the zoo. We were really impressed that there is such a huge green place in the middle of a busy city. Lots of people went on a walk or were running along the tracks. Because of this it became visible for us that the inhabitants really enjoy this piece of paradise.