Visitors will be spoiled for choice.
The Luas strike may be going ahead on Easter Monday (March 28) as planned, but that hasn’t stopped the plethora of events set up for the big day.
RTÉ has organised the biggest public history and cultural event ever staged in Ireland to celebrate the centenary, with a shedload of talks, performances, food, music, theatre and much more going on around eight different zones in Dublin city centre.
Glen Killane of RTÉ speaks about Easter Monday's 'Reflecting the Rising' event. pic.twitter.com/9N4IpRnrxV
— JOE.ie (@JOEdotie) March 25, 2016
These are the events that RTÉ is offering, free of charge:
- Choose from 300 talks as historians, leading commentators and relatives of the rebels explore the events of Easter Week and its aftermath.
- Watch hundreds of performers bring the streets alive through drama and music.
- Explore the city with the family and enjoy circus acts, fairground attractions, vintage vehicles, story-tellers, pop-up performances, poetry recitations, exhibitions and more.
- Visit 8 designated family zones for hands-on workshops in computer gaming, song-writing, story-telling, visual art and speech-writing – all with a 1916 twist!
- Experience the games children played a century ago at Play-Day in Merrion Square.
- Watch Insurrection, the acclaimed 1966 Telefís Éireann drama, in its entirety.
- Allow our walking tour guides to bring you on a journey of discovery through the streets of Dublin, showing you where blood was spilled and history was made..
- Step inside the Four Courts and hear about the Rising in its court rooms from judges and invited speakers.
- Soak up the atmosphere on O’Connell Street with music, live broadcasts, exhibitions and street performances – everyone is invited to arrive in period dress.
- Enjoy a day of discussion and music at the Gaiety Theatre as well-known Irish people living abroad come home to share their views on where we’re at as a Republic.
- Get involved in our debating sessions as we tease out contentious aspects of this important period of our history.
- Take a stroll around our tented craft villages to see how we made things in 1916.
- Listen to live music from 1916 and the decades since, performed by some of our best musicians including Altan, Sharon Shannon, Declan O’Rourke, the Dublin Gospel Choir, the Contempo Quartet, Mick Moloney, the High Kings, Maura O’Connell, Cór Chuil Aodh and Rowsome Uileann Piping Quartet.
- See live radio in action as RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ lyric fm broadcast throughout the city across the day.
- Dance the afternoon away at our Ceilí Mór at Earlsfort Terrace.
Speaking ahead of the event on Easter Monday, Noel Curran, Director-General of RTÉ said:
“RTÉ, working with Ireland 2016 and a range of other partners, have produced a rich and diverse cultural and historical programme of free events and activities for the public.
“I very much hope that the public respond, as they did last year, to this great collective effort by filling the streets and the historic buildings of our capital city and joining RTÉ to commemorate and celebrate a century of Irish life.”
Clip via YouTube/RTÉ – IRELAND’S NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA
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