Eyewitness: This is Dublin on a bright Saturday afternoon close to 90 years after the 1916 rising. A fire is spewing out black smoke near enough to the GPO to make you wonder from afar whether the iconic building is on fire. Looters run out of shops wearing smiles and carrying armfuls of stolen produce.
Cries of "Brits out" and "free staters" and "RUC gardaí" come out of the mouths of masked men and a small number of women. Young boys throw bottles across makeshift barricades at people they think might be "the Protestants" but who are just fellow rioters.
The shutters are down on most shops, the frightened staff cowering inside. Planks of wood, bottles, rocks, bangers, pipes, building blocks fly through the air at gardaí.
A skip is overturned in the middle of O'Connell Street; a man with a bloody face is shouting about police brutality. This is Dublin - you have to keep reminding yourself of that.
In town to do some shopping, we park the car in Fleet Street at about 1.50pm. Hearing shouting and sirens we walk towards the crowds on O'Connell Bridge and see people hanging out of the Daniel O'Connell statue just like they do at the St Patrick's Day's march, to get a better view.
Further down the street, near Eason, a line of gardaí in riot gear is being pelted with an eclectic range of missiles, anything from full bottles of fizzy orange to large pieces of rubble from the roadworks that line the street.
The mostly male rioters use Irish flags as cloaks and green football scarves as masks to cover their faces. Ordinary Dubliners. Extraordinary day.
This is Dublin - you can see the Spire soaring over the crowds, so it must be.
There are families with children standing at the window of the first floor of McDonald's taking pictures at what's going on below even as teenagers wearing Tricolour masks attempt to shatter the window of the ground floor of the takeaway restaurant with metal bars.
Across the road, a young boy, he can't be more than 16, uses a length of pipe to smash the windows of the Ulster Bank. A cheer erupts. "Where are the orange bastards?" someone shouts.
"They've gone to the Dáil," someone else replies.
Outside Schuh, a large shop on O'Connell Street, a man who looks about 18 uses a rock to bash away at the plate glass. The same thing is happening at the Footlocker shop next door and Clark's up the road.
After several attempts, the glass on the doors begins to splinter and shatter, metal barriers are hauled up and seconds later, young men and women run into the shop, coming out with a variety of booty including shoes and boots and bags.
"Have you got size six?" roars one woman at her friend. A man stands outside and motions through the window to his friend inside the shop, picking out a particular brand of sports shoe. People emerge from the shops with jumpers filled with produce, sports bags and trainers and sweatshirts.
Two girls start screaming at each other, arguing over which one of them is entitled to a stolen bag. Minutes pass until eventually several gardaí break from their line to protect the shop. The looters run away laughing.
"I hope it fits me," says one man, breaking off the tag from a grey sweatshirt he has just liberated from a store.
We take pictures and make videos of the action with our digital cameras and our mobile phones. Those of us not taking part stand watching. Some of us are laughing, some of us are cheering, some of us are doing a running commentary, some of us are saying nothing, some of us shaking our heads.
It is surreal, like a revolution that should be happening somewhere else, in some foreign country, or, you know, at least as far away as the North, where we can watch it from the comfort of our sitting rooms.
"You fucking Brit-loving bastards," a rioter shouts at the gardaí. "Protecting fucking Protestants. You should be ashamed to be Irish." Some of us are.
"All Irish people do not feel this way," a Dublin woman with tears in her eyes says to a black man who is recording the looting with his camcorder. "I know that, I know," he tells her. "This is what happens all the time to us, now you understand. You Irish think every Nigerian is crazy."
The woman nods. Now she understands.
It is, you can't help thinking when a brief lull descends and the gardaí start to clear people from O'Connell Bridge, a lovely day for a riot. Puffy clouds have arranged themselves across a blue sky, the sun shines and a stiff breeze is on hand to flutter the banners which urge us to remember the Dublin/Monaghan bombings or to cool those who get sweaty while running away from the gardaí through glass-strewn streets.
At about 3pm the crowds are moved on to Aston Quay.
These are Dubliners. They sing Olé, Olé, Olé as they throw missiles and they shout I, I, IRA. Outside the Londis newsagents at the corner of Westmoreland Street and Aston Quay, one of the ringleaders of this rioting faction wears a black football top that is an homage to the hunger strikers 25 years ago. Sands 81 is printed in white lettering on the back. Obligingly, he stops throwing bottles long enough to explain why he is here.
"It's those Protestants coming down here," he says in a strong Dublin accent, spitting out the words.
"They are nothing but Orange c***s. They are Shankill Boys and Shankill Butchers. They are marching in memory of people killed by the IRA, but the IRA wouldn't have had to kill anyone if Catholics weren't tortured and given no jobs and treated like second-class citizens.
"And if they like England so much then tell them to go back. There is a B&I ferry leaving the port down the road at 4pm. Tell them to go fuck themselves and go back there because this," he gestures around at the masked youths firing bottles at the gardaí, "is Ireland's answer to them."
Someone has found a wheelie bin full of empty bottles in a side street leading to Temple Bar. The contents are spilled on to Aston Quay and rioters help themselves to missiles from this unorthodox bottle bank. As they throw bottles, a man takes a spade to the side window of the Londis store.
After a few swings, a jagged hole is cut in the window and men and women swarm around it, reaching in for boxes of chocolates and cans of beer which they raise jubilantly like trophies over their heads.
Gardaí swarm around them, chasing the looters, waving their batons, ordering people off the street.
A boy who looks about 12-years-old tells me he just hit a garda on the head with a bottle.
"It was deadly," he says.
"He's been driven to it by the Protestants and the Brits," says one man anxious to justify the boy's actions.
The crowd is pushed further down the quay by the gardaí. The rioters notice a CCTV camera on the side of a building. The camera is moving this way and that, as if under the circumstances it doesn't quite know where to look.
A masked teenager shimmies up the building and after a couple of attempts manages to disconnect the camera. There is a cheer.
Gardaí move in again and the rioters escape down a side street into Temple Bar where tourists sipping cappuccinos in coffee bars or downing pints in bars look on in confusion.
The rioters engage in a stand- off with gardaí in Temple Bar. One puts his finger to his head as though it's a gun and shouts
"Bang bang, Jerry McCabe, bang bang, Jerry McCabe".
"Keep saying that, lads, it drives them [ gardaí] mad," he shouts at his fellow rioters. Riot vans appear and an amplified garda voice booms out telling us to leave the streets or else we will be forcibly removed. The rioters cross the bridge into Capel Street, swigging cans of beer, singing about the IRA and waving Irish flags as they go.
Around the corner in the Temple Bar food market, people are buying organic vegetables and eating tortillas while a busker plays a sorrowful tune on a tin whistle. This is Dublin.