Dublin Ireland’s General Post Office

/ Bulldog Travels

Why would anyone give a rip about visiting a post office if not to mail a letter or package? Generally I try to avoid visiting them as much as I do the Department of Motor Vehicles.  However, in this case Dublin’s famous General Post Office, or GPO, played a huge part in the Easter Rebellion and is therefor a historic landmark. In 1916 rebels holed up on the Georgian GPO with adversaries posted across the street and down O’Connell street for days.  The building was all but destroyed during the rising and later restored with the granite façade remaining original.  Bullet holes still adorn the iconic columns of the GPO as do nearby sculptures.  These bullet holes, as well as many other such historic ideals in Dublin are kept as a reminder rather than repaired.  The building is iconic and important for the Irish Republic and Dublin representing a major historical event and Irish nationalism.  Within the post office, and on display in the front window, is a statue of Cuchilainn sculpted as a reminder of the rebellion.

Can anyone think of other seemingly inconsequential structures made important due to historical events that took place nearby or on site?

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GPO


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Cuchilainn


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Look closely at her elbow and you will see a bullet hole

To read more about my most recent trip to Ireland I welcome you to click here…

13 thoughts on “Dublin Ireland’s General Post Office”

  2. La préfecture de police on the Ile de la Cité. Equivalent to NY’#1 Police Plaza I guess. That was the site of some of the fiercest battles during the Liberation of Paris, in August 44. The French police had taken arms with the Resistance against the Nazis and barricaded inside the building. There are many bullet holes still. A reminder of bravery. 🙂

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    • I imagine there are many places like this. I love the idea of leaving reminders of history around. I recall seeing a bombed out Gothic church in Hamburg once that someone told me was left as a reminder. I don’t actually know that was true but then again it was still there from the war so who am I to question.

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      • I didn’t know about Hamburg, but I’ve seen one in Berlin, a charred tower was all that remained. Berlin was in ruins. (My mother went there in ’45). The Germans wanted to tear the remains down and the Allies said: “No, no. It stays, so that you will forever remember”…
        (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church)
        And as reminders of the war, when you walk in Paris, and know what to look for, there are hundreds of plaques named for those who fell for the liberation of Paris. Very… “poignant”.

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          • There is an open-air monument in Berlin with stand-up cubes in memory of the “Holocaust”. Quite impressive. There is also a Hannah Arendt Strasse, which is good (One of my favourite philosophers). I like Berlin, but the city puts me ill at ease, many a street name is the memory of some atrocity. My mother went there at the end of the war. She said id smelled of death. 😦

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          • That makes perfect sense to me. Hard not to think about it. I feel the same way about the World Trade Center site. They have built a glorious monument and new buildings and whatnot. But, there is no un-seeing or un-feeling what happened there. I suppose though, even if it makes us unsettled, it will always remind us of what happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again. Having said that it sure seems like a lot of history is repeating itself again these days…

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  4. I think I would have to nominate the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Destroyed during the War and the scene of an unnecessary massacre it was never rebuilt and is maintained as a permanent memorial and museum.
    My second nomination would be the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.

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