Dublin 8 Ranked One of The World's Coolest Neighbourhoods by Time Out Magazine!

This year, we couldn’t help but switch up our priorities. Food, drink, nightlife, culture – important. Community spirit, resilience, sustainability – just as important, especially if we are to come out of this pandemic with things we can be proud of and tell the rest of the world about.

Just like we’ve done for the past three years, we took the results of our annual Time Out Index survey (which this year polled 27,000 city-dwellers) to our local editors and contributors. They then vetted the public vote against those all-important criteria – cool stuff, but also kind stuff, forward-looking stuff – and made their final picks. Our panel of experts then ranked the lot.

No 15: Dublin 8

Dublin 8 captures the essence and charm of the Irish capital to a tee. With much of the city being built up with cookie-cutter hotels and skyscrapers, this nook has retained much of its original architecture. But there have been plenty of positive changes in the past year too. Lucky’s pub has been transformed into a cultural hotspot with excellent rotating exhibitions, while Pearse Lyons Distillery is taking tours around its church distillery again. The neighbourhood brims with vintage and bric-à-brac shops, street art, markets, homey cafés, and it’s also where you’ll find some of the city’s hottest foodie talent. Not to mention the Dublin Food Co-op, where locals can buy organic produce and educate themselves at sustainability workshops and other community events.

The perfect day

Cosy up in The Fumbally, a dog-friendly café and shop where you’ll find locally made treats and kickass coffee. Next, go for a walk in the War Memorial Gardens or Phoenix Park (which is home to hundreds of wild fallow deer), or take a trip round the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Come afternoon, take a tour of a distillery like Teelings, Stillgarden or Roe&Co, before finishing off with pints at the MVP, where there’s always something fun on (like live music or an open-mic night).

Plan your Trip

For ‘Wild Lights’, an epic art installation that will transform Dublin Zoo with a light trail featuring more than a thousand lanterns (October 28 to January 9 2022).

Read the full list