June 19-Architectural Tour, Irish Music and Dance—Riley Mahan, Chris Levesque, Cavainna McBurnett, Eric Guditz
June 19 Architectural Tour, Irish Music and Dance
Group C: Riley Mahan, Chris Levesque, Cavainna McBurnett, Eric Guditz
Architectural Tour
On Wednesday we began our day with a walking tour of Dublin’s architecture with John Montague, an old friend of Professor Baronian. Starting beside the Liffey River, we discussed what our group thought were the 5 main pillars of architecture: commodity, firmness, delight, location, and meaning/significance. He also posed the question “Why do rivers matter?”. For this, we came up with transportation, resources, waste disposal and borders. Our second location was Isolde’s tower, the last remnants of which are almost underground. The tower, built in the 13th century, was once a part of the city's first line of defense. Thirdly, we admired the Christ Church Cathedral, which is actually shaped like a cross. Montague instilled the idea that The medieval order of things was generally that rich knights went around killing people and sponsored priests to pray for their eternally damned souls so they could avoid hell as punishment for their killings. While the peasants did literally all the work. The next installment of our journey was Dublin Castle: the stronghold of English nobility and government during their occupation of Ireland, and an excellent example of Gothic vs Gothic Revival architecture. We learned about how just like we idolize the medieval age and architecture, in medieval times they idolized the Greco-Roman’s, as evidenced by the ionic and doric columns, arches, and most importantly the triangles all heavily featured in the castle’s courtyard. Finally, we traveled to the original parliament building. Built on the College green, this former bank was the world's first intentional bicameral parliament building.
Irish Dance Party
Following our wonderful architecture tour we visited Merchant Arch Bar for an Irish dance party. The bar was covered in framed posters of various contents including Guinness ads, sports jerseys, old pictures, and what we believe to be road signs. The party started with a local lad signing his heart out on an acoustic guitar. We were all thrilled when three young Irish ladies in green dresses came out and began to dance. The dancers and the singers alternated turns performing. The dancers also invited all the guests down to the dance floor to teach us two different dances, move by move. Even for those of us who chose to grab a Guinness or a Diet Coke instead of a dance partner, we still had a wonderful time immersing ourselves in such a time-honored piece of Irish culture.
