Trinity College and the Long Room

The beautiful Trinity College is a place literature-lovers tend to gravitate towards. Quite apart from the fact that it is home to the famous Book of Kells, there is something equally spectacular above. For here is the fabulous and hoary two-storey 18th century library called the Long Room with over 200,000 of the oldest books. It is 65 m long and is lined with marble busts of writers, philosophers and other prominent men, the most famous of which is that of Jonathan Swift. It also has a unique distinction: it is a copyright library, meaning it has the rights to receive material published in the Republic of Ireland free of charge, perhaps one of the few such in the world and the only Irish one. It is also here that Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift studied.