St Patrick's Cathedral & Jonathan Swift's Tomb

Why is it significant?

Step into the lush park flanking St Patrick's Cathedral and pause beside the ancient stone well where Saint Patrick is said to have baptized early Celtic converts around the year four hundred and fifty.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step into the lush park flanking St Patrick's Cathedral and pause beside the ancient stone well where Saint Patrick is said to have baptized early Celtic converts around the year four hundred and fifty. Gaze up at the soaring grey limestone spire: standing over forty meters tall, this is the largest church in all of Ireland, founded as a collegiate church in eleven ninety-one.

Look toward the cathedral transept. Inside rests the tomb of Ireland's greatest satirist, Jonathan Swift, who served as dean of this cathedral from seventeen thirteen until seventeen forty-five. It was during his years in the deanery right across the road that Swift penned Gulliver's Travels and his savage satire A Modest Proposal, defending the starving Irish peasantry against English exploitation.

Swift's self-composed Latin epitaph in the floor proclaims that he rests where fierce indignation can tear his heart no more. Beside him lies his beloved companion Esther Johnson, immortalized in his letters as Stella.

Also inside is the Door of Reconciliation, with its famous hole chopped through the timber in fourteen ninety-two where the heads of warring Butler and Fitzgerald clans shook hands, originating the famous phrase to chance your arm. Head back toward Grafton Street.