The James Joyce Centre

Dedicated to the promotion of both James Joyce’s personal life and his great literary works, the centre organises special events including lectures, fiction writing courses, and hosts the annual Bloomsday festival and celebrations in June. The festival is a brilliant way to familiarise yourself with Joycean history, with the centre staging city tours, performances and re-enactments of Ulysses.

The Joyce family lived in houses similar to the centre, though not in this one (although Joyce’s brother Charles lived nearby at No. 30). Two portraits of Joyce hang in the Kenmare Room, one by Jacques Emile Blanche, and one by Irish artist Harry Kernoff. (These are copies, the originals being part of the Poetry and Rare Books Collection at the State University of New York at Buffalo). The James Joyce Centre also have a reproduction of the portrait of Nora Barnacle by Tulio Silvestri on display.

Back on the ground floor, if you continue outside to the yard, you will see the original door from No. 7 Eccles Street. In Ulysses this is Leopold Bloom’s address, but the house itself was demolished to make way for an extension to the Mater Hospital, though the door was saved and is on loan to us.