Here are some pictures from the National Gallery of Ireland. This museum is actually closed to the public--in 2007 one of its marble cantilever staircases fell down during a tour with 11 visitors on it! We saw the damaged area--and took a different route. It looked like not much had been done with the renovation given funding at this stage. The museum had been scheduled to close prior to the accident, but the press was pretty bad.
This is an historic Victorian museum. It reminded me of the children's book "From mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" with us being in the museum when you weren't supposed to be! The displays are now historically significant and contained a number of extinct species--including a dodo bird shown here. Also shown is an extinct Irish deer--amazing span for its antlers! Another unique part was several pieces created out of blown glass to look like examples of species, like jelly fish and other things hard to have stuffed or perserved--they have one of the largest collections, with others in the Corning Glass museum. This was a favorite stop.
This looks like an awesome museum - there's nothing quite like the reconstructed skeleton of an extinct species as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been to Dublin since 1999, but when I was there we visited a museum/attraction called Dublinia. It's got different exhibits designed to display modern life through the notable eras of Irish history. It was by far the highlight of my trip (and the only thing I remember, for the most part). I highly recommend that you check it out.
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