In the past decade, give or take a few years, Dublin has come back from semi-decrepitude and galloping urban decay to be, once again, a flourishing capital city. Almost too flourishing, some may say, with neo-Georgiana shooting up everywhere adding to the work of 1960s "developers" who were allowed to pull down sound buildings and put up concrete box-shells; the traffic gridlocked almost around the clock, and hideous, vast, shapeless concrete suburbs spilling out into neighbouring counties. Decades of inhibiting poverty have been followed by Celtic Tiger prosperity, which has come too quickly and hectically for the steadier heads around to discreetly rein it in. Nevertheless, overall, development has been positive - and at least the terrible inner-city slums are becoming a memory.
Conservation has become an accepted part of public duty, even if too many business and other interests have driven their coaches (or rather, their Mercedes and Porsches) through protective legislation. Buildings have been reclaimed or restored, Dublin's past (in spite of the Wood Quay scandal of 20 years ago) has been steadily and scientifically excavated, grim areas such as the quays have gradually been won back for urban living, and notable successes include the National Concert Hall, the DART, the opening of Merrion Square to the public, the conversion of Kilmainham Royal Hospital into a modern art gallery and the completion of the RHA Gallagher Gallery.
Commercial dishonesty, bureaucratic stupidity, public apathy, mediocre architects and inept or hidebound planners all have much to answer for in the years since the second World War. Yet Dublin today is vibrant and living on its present - just witness the tourists crowding through it all year round - where instead, for many years, it was living introspectively on its past. Joyce would scarcely recognise his old grimy, decaying, picturesque city, if he came back from the dead. In many ways, that is no bad thing. With the 21st century just about to begin, Dublin Corporation (in association with Hamilton Osborne King and the National Millennium Committee) has sponsored a book by Pat Liddy (whose Dublin Today series ran for several years in this newspaper): a handsome production, well above the usual coffee-table level, lively and informatively written, and with outstanding illustrations including maps and drawings as well as photographs. In slightly fewer than 300 pages, it traces the city's history from the first century AD to the present.
It did not, of course, really exist as a city until Viking times, but the river ford, called Atha Cliath (the ford of the hurdles), dates back to the Celtic centuries. Stone-age hunters had previously moved about the coastal area of north Leinster but they were largely nomadic and built few or no settlements, nor did they till the land much or fell forests. The Celts, however, apart from having superior weaponry to the indigenous peoples, were more enterprising and hewed roads through Ireland's dense forests.
The conversion of Ireland to Christianity (which Liddy rather misleadingly attributes to Saint Patrick, in fact a relatively late arrival) encouraged monastic settlements. An early one was founded at the place called Dubh Linn (Black Pool), near the present site of Dublin Castle. However, the Norsemen arrived in 837 (Scandinavian invaders in Ireland have been habitually called "Danes" but it seems rather doubtful if they were) and a large fleet carried about 3,000 of them up the Liffey estuary, where they built a longport, a kind of stockaded anchorage. Driven out in 902, they returned in greater force and under their king, Sitric, built a proper settlement protected by earth mounds and stockades, which they seem to have called Dyflin.
Probably the native Irish could have expelled them easily enough if they had really tried, but the Norse were useful as mercenaries and traders, and their kingdom lasted until the Norman-English invasion. The survivors from the capture of the city, or town, then fled across the Liffey to the area now called Oxmantown (Ostmantown) where they were more or less left alone. As Ireland came increasingly under the English Crown, King John ordered the building of Dublin Castle. The Normans had already rebuilt Christ Church, replacing the original wooden structure with a proper stone cathedral. St Mary's Abbey, founded in 1139 as a Benedictine monastery, became a Cistercian one, and it was there, in 1534, that "Silken Thomas" renounced his allegiance to Henry VIII of England and launched his inept attempt at rebellion, which ended with his execution at Tyburn. Today, all that survives are the chapter house and an adjoining passage.
Tudor rule was heavy-handed but insecure, and Dublin remained for a long time "the Pale", subject to raids and periodic panics, though Trinity College was founded in 1592. It had 200 students to start with and was subject to regular flooding from the Liffey.
However, the original building is long gone and now the oldest section of the college is the Rubrics, dating from between 1680 and 1700. Cromwell's landing in 1649 was another black, though brief, interlude, but the city had something of a golden age under the rule of probably the greatest of all the Viceroys, the Duke of Ormonde. This period saw the building of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham as a home for veteran soldiers (1680-1684), directly inspired by Les Invalides in Paris.
The 18th century was a great age architecturally for the city. Early in the century, Marsh's Library, Dr Steevens' Hospital, and other landmarks went up and in the mid-century came many of the great Georgian buildings - the Provost's House in Trinity College, Powerscourt House, Newman House, Charlemont House (now the Hugh Lane Gallery) and the Casino at Marino - as well as various fine streets and squares. Gandon's Custom House - which had at least four short-lived predecessors - came later, in 1781, and he followed it with the King's Inns (1795-1827). Gandon also did much, or most, of the work on the Four Courts, completed in 1802. Yet perhaps the most remarkable creation of all was the Phoenix Park, largely begun by that liberal peer, Lord Chesterfield, then Viceroy, which remains unique of its kind as a public amenity. The core at least of the Vice-Regal Lodge, now Aras an Uachtarain, was built in 1751.
Whatever claims may be made, Dublin never shared fully in the commercial and maritime boom of late Georgian and early Victorian England. Handsome new suburbs, however, were added; many new streets built; new hospitals and churches (including the Pro-Cathedral) went up; and there were formidable strides in public health and sanitation, lighting and water supplies. Ruskin's craze for Venetian Gothic was responsible for the Museum Building in Trinity College, and a succession of rather similar buildings in adjoining streets. Museums and public institutions proliferated, including the National Gallery which opened in 1864 and has grown steadily since. And, of course, the railways came and Dublin's great stations were created.
Public statuary thrived too, though Foley's great equestrian stature of General Gough in the Phoenix Park has been the victim of republican zealots. The Victorians had a strong social conscience. St Patrick's Park was created by the Lord Iveagh, Edward Cecil Guinness, on the site of cleared slums and was presented to Dublin Corporation in the 1920s - after a recent clean-up, it now looks better than it ever did. Similarly, the Earl of Pembroke, a prominent landlord, created Herbert Park, though it did not pass to Dublin Corporation until 1932.
Recently, there has been a significant development of Dublin port and the areas along the quays, and the State has shown genuine initiative in buying and maintaining Malahide Castle as a public amenity. New public art has been patronised, though much of it has been disappointing. Visual showpieces such as Killiney Bay have been protected, though precariously, and Dun Laoghaire keeps a good deal of its old character, though the harbour is currently under threat. But areas of the Liffey Valley have been ruined for ever, while tasteless neon signs and kitsch shop fronts continue to disfigure the very core of the city centre. It cannot really be claimed, either, that contemporary Irish architecture is rife with genius, though at least the concrete-cube mania of the 1950s and 1960s has sunk into history (this, by the way, implies no disrespect to buildings such as the late Michael Scott's Busaras, which has lasted well. New bridges cross the Liffey, new roads are beginning to ring and span the city suburbs and a new civic consciousness is very definitely in the air - which recent scandals have strengthened rather than weakened. Above all, there is an expansive, rather raw energy in a city which manages somehow to cope with traffic stalemates, overpopulation (Dublin has one-third of the Republic's people, a ridiculous equation), rampant greed, a housing shortage and too rapid a tempo of living. Eblana floreat!
Dublin: a Celebration. From the 1st to the 21st Century by Pat Liddy is published by Dublin Corporation in association with Hamilton Osborne King. Hardback: £25; paperback: £17.99