General Post Office (GPO): The Bullets of 1916

Why is it significant?

Stand right before the six massive fluted Ionic columns of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand right before the six massive fluted Ionic columns of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street. Run your fingers over the grey Portland stone pillars: you can still feel the deep, jagged scars left by British rifle bullets and shrapnel fired during Easter Week nineteen sixteen, when this civilian building became the roaring heart of the Irish Revolution.

On Easter Monday, April twenty-fourth, nineteen sixteen, rebel leader Patrick Pearse stepped out right beneath this portico and read aloud the Proclamation of the Irish Republic to a stunned crowd of bystanders. Irish Volunteers and James Connolly's Citizen Army seized the post office, barricading the windows with mailbags and hoisting the green flag of the Republic overhead.

For six desperate days, the rebels held out as British artillery shells from the gunboat Helga in the river set the building ablaze. Connolly directed the defenses from a mattress after being shot in the ankle. When the flaming roof collapsed, the garrison tunneled through adjacent rowhouses before surrendering to save civilian lives.

Pearse, Connolly, and fourteen other rebel commanders were executed by British firing squads in Kilmainham Gaol shortly after. Their sacrifice ignited public outrage and birthed the modern Irish nation. Walk south toward the river and the Ha'penny Bridge.