Like many Dubliners, I pass through Merchants’ Arch a few times a week, normally in a hurry somewhere. Connecting Liffey Street and the Temple Bar district via the Ha’penny Bridge, the archway even pops up in Ulysses, as Leopold Bloom searches for a (rather naughty) book for his beloved Molly. Much has changed since the time of Bloom, but there are still people selling goods in the Arch from time to time, not to mention buskers and long-established businesses.

Like much of what is beautiful and old about the city today, the Wide Streets Commission is to thank for this arched passage, insisting on it as a necessary thoroughfare. Established by an Act of Parliament in 1757, this body reshaped Dublin as the people knew it, creating networks ofnew streets and leading Dublin into a new era. As the masterful study Dublin Through Space and Time notes, “the Wide Streets Commissioners brought a truly European vision of urban design to Dublin.” So many of the streets we enjoy today – Parliament Street, D’Olier Street, Westmoreland Street – are part of the vision of this body.

Merchants’ Arch forms a part of the Merchants’ Hall, built to the designs of the celebrated architect Frederick Darley in 1821. Today occupied by a public house and restaurant, the building was constructed for the use of the Merchant’s Guild, who originally had their premises at the Tailors Hall in Back Lane, near to Christchurch Cathedral. In the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth, Dublin was home to a number of