Narrow cobbled lanes closed to traffic, lined with painted timber shopfronts and hanging pub signs.
What Temple Bar looks like
Temple Bar is a grid of cobbled lanes closed to traffic, laid out on the district's medieval street pattern and built up mostly in the eighteenth century. Three and four storey stone and brick buildings line them, ground floors painted timber shopfronts in blue, green and red under hanging signs.
and are typical of the narrower lanes, barely wide enough for a delivery van, with shopfronts close on both sides. Essex Street East runs a little wider than the lanes around it, closer to the width of a regular street. Temple Bar Square, at the centre, opens the lanes into a paved pedestrian space.
is closed on its sides by the Gallery of Photography, the National Photographic Archive, the Irish Film Institute and the Ark. The Ark keeps its 1728 meeting house facade on Eustace Street, with a fold out stage behind it. Four tall retractable canopies stand over the square, put up to cover outdoor screenings and markets.
, a vaulted laneway beside the Ha'penny Bridge, is the main entrance from the quays on the north side. Wellington Quay runs along the river there, with the same three and four storey buildings facing the water instead of a lane.
Shot in Temple Bar
The Commitments used the corner of Essex Street East and Temple Lane South for the scene where drummer Billy Mooney tests a kit in a pawnbroker's window. Once ends with Guy and Girl walking together across Temple Bar Square, just before Guy leaves for London.
The Commitments, 1991
PJ Delaney's pawnbroker shop stood on the ground floor here when the production dressed its window for the scene where Billy Mooney tests a drum kit before joining the band. The building is a four storey corner block in brown brick with granite quoins at its base, a restaurant today. Street View
What Temple Bar can double for
The Lanes in Brighton, England
The Lanes in Brighton are just as narrow and cobbled, closed to cars the same way Temple Bar is. Small shopfronts line the same kind of pedestrian lane, with pubs from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries packed close together. Flint cottages and hung mathematical tiles are the giveaway in a close shot, and the light off the English Channel reads differently from Dublin's. Try searching cobbled pedestrian lanes now.
The Rocks in Sydney has the same kind of cobbled lane lined with old colonial pubs, cut from sandstone rather than brick, dating to the city's first decades. The pale sandstone blocks and harbour views at the end of the lanes are the giveaway in a wide shot. Try searching cobbled colonial pub lanes now.
Grassmarket in Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh's Grassmarket is a wider cobbled square than Temple Bar's lanes, but the tenements and pub fronts around it read the same way on camera. Edinburgh Castle sits directly above the square in most angles, and the tenements run taller than Temple Bar's four storeys. Try searching cobbled square with pubs now.
