Dublin

Through the 14th and 15th centuries Dublin stayed a small walled town, under constant threat from the Irish clans around it; the Black Death came in through the port in 1348 and killed thousands. Only the Tudor conquest of the 16th century, which carried English rule across the whole island, made Dublin the true capital of Ireland. Elizabeth I meant it to be a Protestant one: in 1592 she founded Trinity College as a university for Protestants alone and handed St Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals to the reformed church. Plague killed almost half the inhabitants between 1649 and 1651, but the wool and linen trade with England soon filled the city again.

The 18th century was Dublin's grandest. Linen escaped the restrictions laid on Irish wool and became the country's chief export, and the money built Parliament House, the Royal Exchange and the squares of Georgian Dublin, while a Wide Streets Commission, set up in 1757, laid out straight new streets and bridges. For a time, with more than 130,000 people, Dublin was the second city of the British Empire.