Heritage hot spots: History, nature, art, environment

Chester Beatty Library

What is it?The Chester Beatty Library, at Dublin Castle, houses one of the richest and finest international collections of illuminated manuscripts, sacred texts and miniature paintings from the world's great religions and belief systems. It was amassed by the American art collector Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), who originally housed it in a library he built on Shrewsbury Road, in Dublin. An engineer and mining consultant with Irish ancestry, Beatty bequeathed the collection to the Irish people when he died. It moved to the renovated Clock Tower building at the castle in the 1990s.

Why visit?The library offers a perfect retreat from the modern world of instant messaging and crowded urban spaces. A wander through the two permanent exhibitions – Sacred Traditions and Artistic Traditions – will give you some insight into Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and, to a lesser degree, Confucianism, Daoism, Sikhism and Jainism. You can see biblical papyri – manuscript volumes of the Bible from the early second to fourth centuries with the earliest known copies of the four Gospels – and richly illustrated and illuminated manuscripts from the Koran, with work by the leading calligraphers in the Islamic world of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Why now?The library regularly celebrates the cultural traditions represented in its collections. Today it has free screenings of contemporary Iranian films from 1pm to 3pm, followed by a question-and-answer session. From Tuesday to Friday next, at 1pm each day, artists from Graphic Studio Dublin will display printmaking techniques that reflect those used in the library's collections.

The Silk Road cafe serves Middle Eastern delicacies, and the library’s bookshop has an interesting array of objects, books, cards and journals linked to material on display.

Researchers can arrange a visit to a reading room to study reference material on the collections and on the history of writing, printing and calligraphy.

Cultural craft workshops for seven- to 11-year-olds are also held every month.

How to get there?The Chester Beatty Library is a 10-minute walk from Trinity College Dublin, in the grounds of Dublin Castle, off Dame Street. It is open from Tuesday to Friday between 10am and 5pm (also on Monday from May to September); on Saturday between 11am and 5pm; and on Sunday from 1pm to 5pm. Admission is free. There are free guided tours on Wednesdays at 1pm and on Sundays at 3pm and 4pm; 01-4070750, cbl.ie.