Trinity college
;) |
;) |
Trinity College is the oldest university in Ireland. Founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth 1 on the site of an Fufustinian monastery, is in an enviable position in the very heart of Ireland's capital.
The College on its 40 acre site retains some of its ancient seclusion and its cobbled squares, gardens and parks have a tranquil atmosphere compared to the bustling streets outside. The campus contains a unique collection of buildings dating from the 18th to the 20th century.
Originally a Protestant college, it only begun to take Catholics in numbers after 1970, when the Catholic Church relaxed its opposition to their attending. Among the famous past students of Trinity were the writers Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, John Milington Synge and Samuel Beckett; the patriots Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Henry Grattan and Thomas Davis; the philosophers George Berkeley and Edmund Burke. And more recently, the Irish President from 1990 to 1997, Mary Robinson.
The College is famed for the great treasures it has the honour to be guardian of. These include the BOOK of KELLS, a 9th century illuminated manuscript, the books of Durrow and Armagh and an early Irish harp. These are displayed in The Colonnades exhibition Gallery and the Long Room which houses over 200,000 of Trinity's oldest books. The BOOK of KELLS contain the four Gospels, written in Latin and full of an exquisite array of complex and colourful illustrations. It was found in the County Meath town of Kells, but was probably written by four individual monks on a monastery on the island of Iona, off the Scottish coast, sometime around AD 800.