The 51 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Dublin

Four Georgian townhouses, knocked through and turned into a luxury hotel on Merrion Street, which means the rooms feel like rooms rather than hotel rooms. Fresh flowers on the tables, art on every wall, and a fireplace doing actual work. The Forbes Four Star rating sits quietly on the shelf. The Irish government buildings are next door, so the neighborhood has a certain gravity to it, and the hotel leans into that without getting stiff about it.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

A hotel tucked just off Grafton Street, The Westbury sits at the seam of Dublin's shopping and arts quarters, which means you're never far from anything. The lobby floral arrangements come from local suppliers, the martini at The Sidecar is shaken tableside, and afternoon tea in The Gallery tends to riff on whatever Dublin is doing at the moment. It wears the city rather than just existing in it.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

One of the original copies of the Irish Constitution lives in a suite here, which tells you most of what you need to know about The Shelbourne's place in Dublin life. This grande dame hotel on St Stephen's Green has been around forever, all marble floors, chandelier light, and rooms overlooking the park. The Horseshoe Bar, a 1957 Sam Stephenson design of brass and low ceilings, is worth the visit on its own.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Across from the National Concert Hall and a short walk from St. Stephen's Green, this Forbes Four Star hotel trades on calm in a city that isn't always known for it. Mossy greens and branch-shaped fittings nod to the nearby Iveagh Gardens, while 192 rooms come with herringbone blankets and bedding soft enough to make checkout feel unreasonable. Lemuel's handles cocktails downstairs; the courtyard garden handles everything else.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · World’s Best Cocktail Menu
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tucked into Dublin 4 among embassies and Georgian townhouses, this hotel trades central buzz for genuine quiet, which is exactly the point. Rooms are unfussy and generously sized, and the private car park alone makes it feel more like a serviced apartment than a hotel stay. The Whiskey Bar stocks over a hundred Irish and international blends in a room of leather and oak, while the Reading Room does afternoon tea overlooking the garden.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The cocktail menu arrives as a hardback book, illustrated in the style of the Savoy Cocktail Book, with around 70 drinks inside. VCC is a cocktail bar tucked into Crown Alley, dressed in Victorian furnishings that lean somewhere between charming and chintzy, like a very stylish relative's parlour. The drinks are the whole point, and the list is taken seriously enough that you should probably arrive with time to read it properly.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A Victorian nurses' boardinghouse turned luxury boutique hotel, the Dylan earned its Michelin Key, and a recent redesign by Grainne Weber Architects kept it sharp rather than nostalgic. Italian marble and parquet fill the lobby, rooms are individually furnished with Irish artwork, and the Nurserie terrace, thick with tree ferns, makes the city center feel implausibly far away. The Ruby Room handles cocktails with appropriate decadence.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A Victorian terrace alongside the Grand Canal, close enough to St. Stephen's Green to walk into the city but quiet enough to forget you're in one. The Wilder Townhouse is a boutique hotel that leans into its bones, keeping the original architectural details while letting the decor go somewhere more playful. There's a Gin and Tea Rooms bar for winding down without going far. It holds a Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A secret garden links two very different buildings at this boutique guesthouse just off St. Stephen's Green: a Georgian townhouse and a sleek modernist mews designed by architect Sam Stephenson. Rooms follow whichever house they're in, either ornate cornicing or clean lines. No bar or restaurant keeps things quiet, though breakfast is a serious production. Central Dublin is a short walk in any direction.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A hotel on Fenian Street that splits the difference between Georgian grandeur and design-forward cool, with contemporary Irish art on the walls and rooms that lean boutique without pretending to be a hostel. It sits in that quiet pocket between Merrion Square and Trinity College, close to everything without feeling like it. The Carriage restaurant, the Secret Garden terrace bar, and the Steam Café have all built their own local followings.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A rock garden runs the full length of the ground-floor windows, with Dublin Castle's old brick wall just beyond, which sets the tone for this calm, design-conscious hotel off Aungier Street. Connemara marble and brushed gold carry through the common areas, each floor has a commissioned artwork, and rooms come with herringbone floors and automated curtains. The basement sauna, steam room, and whirlpool are complimentary, which at city-center prices is a genuine differentiator.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The lobby here was a bank vault once, and the columns and vaulted cellar bar make sure you don't forget it. Three joined 19th-century buildings opposite Trinity College now form a sleek modern hotel, with rooms that keep the compact footprint of the original architecture but hide all the expected comforts underneath. Rooms facing the college have the better view, and Temple Bar is close enough to visit but far enough to sleep through.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The neoclassical facade on Merrion Square stops people mid-stride: columns, carved stonework, a grand dome, all of it Georgian and unapologetic. Inside this city hotel, a Swarovski chandelier fills the atrium and upper rooms look out over rooftops. The National Gallery is three minutes away, and Sweny's Pharmacy from Ulysses is directly across the road, which is either a perk or a trivia trap depending on your company.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A boutique hotel in a Georgian terrace that hands you earplugs at check-in, which tells you most of what you need to know. Rooms run from minimal pods and bunk-style options up to proper suites, all equipped with turntables and vinyl. The rooftop bar has city views and a social life to match. Live bands and DJs are a regular feature, so light sleepers should look elsewhere, but everyone else will find it a decent encapsulation of what central Dublin is for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Floor-to-ceiling color greets you at this contemporary hotel on St. Stephen's Green, designed in collaboration with Conran and Partners and since refreshed without retreating to the safe beige most luxury properties favor. Rooms run generous, and the all-day lounge holds its own against the fine-dining room downstairs. The Green itself is a short walk to everywhere Dublin considers central, which is a harder thing to find than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The art deco detailing inside this 128-room hotel on Stephen's Street Lower nods to 1920s Dublin without becoming a costume. Warm lighting, geometric accents, and genuine old-city bones put it a short walk from Trinity and St Stephen's Green. The ground-floor bar, Bartley's, draws enough locals off the street to suggest the hotel isn't leaning on captive guests to keep the lights on, always a reassuring sign.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A hotel on the corner of St Stephen's Green, with Grafton Street a five-minute walk and the Iveagh Gardens practically outside the door. A recent refurbishment brought sage tones, blush pink walls, and terrazzo bathrooms into the mix. The atrium between the old townhouse and the modern extension is worth an hour of anyone's afternoon, and the cocktail bar, Pen and Player, runs a drinks program that holds its own against the city's independent bars, which for a hotel is saying something.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Archaeologists pulled Viking feast pits and medieval coins from this site before the Hoxton could break ground, which sets a certain tone. It's a design hotel on Exchequer Street, close enough to Dublin's nightlife that the front door functions as a starting gun. Rooms run rust and moss green on navy, graded from snug upward. The first-floor Library Bar, back after years away, does oysters and martinis under restored plasterwork.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A nine-room hotel inside one of the Georgian townhouses that line the northern edge of St Stephen's Green, where the cast iron staircase and deep cornicing have been left alone and bold floral wallpaper fills the gaps. The Michelin Guide has it in their selected hotels. Downstairs there's a Japanese restaurant and a basement wine bar, but the room to book is the suite with the marble bath and fireplace looking straight onto the Green.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The building itself stops you: a geometric mass designed by Portuguese architect Aires Mateus to echo coastal rock formations eroding over time, which means the lobby, Dublin's largest, feels more cave than corridor. This luxury hotel in the Docklands has sleek rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and marble soaking tubs, an enclosed rooftop bar with Irish Sea views that works year-round, and a spa with an infinity pool sensibly sheltered from the Dublin sky.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Damien Hirst hanging by reception sets the tone at this 55-room Ballsbridge boutique, where the design runs to Dalmatian-spotted carpets and mid-century shapes offset by work from over eighty Irish artists. Jean-Georges Vongerichten runs a rooftop restaurant upstairs, and The Collins Club handles cocktails below. Service is informal but attentive, and the Rico Suite is essentially a private apartment with Merrion Square at the end of the street.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Exposed brick and original period features run through this Docklands hotel, so the building has something to say before you even check in. Rooms pair heritage details with modern comforts, and Lotti's handles Irish food and cocktails on the ground floor. The bigger draw is the postcode: you're on the Northside, close to Capel Street's independent shops and galleries, in the part of Dublin that doesn't feel like it's performing for tourists.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked into the basement of The Clarence Hotel, this sprawling cocktail bar unfolds across four interconnected rooms, each with its own décor and personality. The first, with a burlesque circus vibe, is always open; the rest only come alive later in the week. It's a rabbit warren in the best sense, full of hidden snugs and corners, though the bartender's tables flanking the bar in that first room are where seasoned visitors tend to land.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Dark panelling runs floor to ceiling, the shutters stay half-drawn, and the gold lettering on the built-in cabinets is the kind of detail someone spent real money on. This cocktail bar on Dawson Street occupies a building with a wig-making past, and the room leans into it without tipping into costume. Worn floorboards, vintage bar, no natural light to speak of. The sort of place that makes you order a second drink before you've finished deciding on the first.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A polished pewter bar curves through a room that reads like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen redecorating Wonderland, all blue velvet stools and purple high chairs. The hotel outside is prim Victorian; the bar inside threw that out immediately. It's a cocktail bar inside the Dylan Hotel, and it commits fully to the glam, in a way that makes restraint seem like someone else's problem.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A long pressed-concrete bar, built to look like granite, stretches the full width of the room and sets the tone the moment you walk in from the Millennium Walkway. This is the cocktail lounge side of a larger Thai restaurant complex, and it earns its own visit: high bar stools, a stylish room, and enough going on that eating here at the bar instead of the dining room feels like the better call.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Rows of boxy leather armchairs face the windows, and those windows face the Liffey, which is a better deal than most hotel bars offer. This is the lobby bar of the Morrison Hotel, a John Rocha-designed property that once described itself as "probably the hippest and coolest luxury hotel in Dublin," which is exactly the kind of confidence you either admire or sidestep. The vibe is calm, the setting is polished, and the river is doing the decorating.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar tucked inside a Georgian townhouse that was built for wealthy merchants and nobility, which is a lot of context to absorb before your first drink. No. 23 takes its name from the house number, so the address and the sign are the same thing. The plasterwork is original, the antiques are serious, and the art on the walls belongs to one of Ireland's significant private collections. Dress accordingly.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Wicker lampshades hang over the long bar, with polished concrete underfoot and an ebony screen separating drinkers from the dining room behind. This is the cocktail bar inside a contemporary Thai-Vietnamese restaurant tucked behind the Westbury Hotel. The name translates as "happy meeting place," which the room seems committed to delivering. The chef's résumé includes cooking for the Thai royal family, which is one way to set expectations at the bar.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Sixteen framed letters from US presidents with Irish heritage line the walls of this basement cocktail bar beneath Shanahan's steakhouse on St Stephen's Green, and yes, Clinton's is addressed to the man himself. An American opened it because Dublin lacked a decent steak house, which tracks. The room is resolutely, cheerfully American, the kind of bar that feels more Boston than Dublin, and nobody down here seems to mind one bit.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The stained glass and towering mahogany back bar with Romanesque arches make The Palace Bar feel less like a pub and more like a church that got its priorities right. One of Fleet Street's old-school institutions, it draws a literary crowd by reputation, the kind of place that was a haunt for intellectuals long before that became a marketing strategy. The snug up front fits five people and has its own quietly dramatic history.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The cobbled courtyard and castle-like facade are your first hint that this pub has been around forever, and it genuinely has, with a tavern on the site since the medieval period. Inside, three low-ceilinged rooms are plastered with historical curiosities, which suits the atmosphere well enough that it never feels like a theme park. A classic old Dublin pub, full stop, and one that's earned the patina.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Victorian snugs up front still have their carved woodwork and whiskey-branded mirrors, exactly as they should. This is an old-school Dublin pub on Lower Baggot Street, the kind that looks modest from the pavement but extends surprisingly far back once you're in. Locals and politicians from nearby Leinster House have long made it a second office, which keeps the conversation loud and the pretension low.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked off the lobby of the Shelbourne, this cocktail bar claims to have invented the Black Velvet, Guinness tipped into champagne in a tall glass, sometime in the early 1870s. London's Brooks's Club disputes that. The bar doesn't seem bothered. It's quieter and more intimate than the hotel's larger bar up front, the kind of place where you order the house claim, because obviously you do, and settle in.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Look for the carved wooden snail above the door on Fade Street, or you'll walk right past. Inside, this upstairs bar spreads across several first-floor rooms with bare floorboards, exposed brick, and original cast iron fireplaces sitting alongside bold modern artwork in a way that probably shouldn't work but does. A tent-covered terrace handles the smokers. The crowd skews young and the whole thing stays cheerfully unpolished.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Dubliners launched their career in the cramped spot by the front window, and that corner still fills with live traditional music seven nights a week. O'Donoghues is an old-school Dublin pub on Merrion Row, the stretch locals call the Royal Mile of traditional bars, near St. Stephen's Green. Pints, fiddles, and a room that has barely changed since the O'Donoghue family converted it from a grocery shop.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The carved mahogany goes floor to ceiling, the chandeliers are cut glass, and the cornices are ornate enough to make you wonder how it stays upright. The Long Hall is an old-school Dublin pub that looks like someone commissioned a Victorian cathedral for drinking purposes. Women were served through hatches until 1951, which puts the velvet-rope arguments of modern bars in useful perspective. Order a pint and look up.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar itself is eight-sided, sitting beneath a domed octagonal window that frames it from above like a skylight built specifically for the occasion. It's a hotel bar inside a quay-side property co-owned by Bono and The Edge, which sounds louder than it is: on most nights the room runs to oak panelling, quiet pints, and someone folding a newspaper. The rock-and-roll provenance is there if you want it, mostly in the telling.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Twenty taps of house-brewed stout will calibrate your expectations fast: this is a beer pub, full stop. The Porterhouse started here off Dame Street before expanding into a chain, but the original still runs its own brewery and sends unpasteurised beer to the bar. Around 180 bottles round out the draught list for anyone who treats a beer menu the way others treat a wine list.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Khaki walls and utilitarian furniture across three floors on South William Street, a bar the regulars have long since shortened to "Swilly." The owners describe it as Dublin's friendliest and funkiest urban lounge, which is the kind of thing that usually invites skepticism, but the easygoing staff and the quality of the DJs make it hard to argue. A style-conscious, music-loving crowd fills it out most nights.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Carved mahogany climbs every surface, including the ceiling, and the stained glass and mosaic floors have been there long enough that the Victorians would still feel at home. The Stag's Head is an old-school Dublin pub on a tucked-away court off Dame Street, the kind of place where the craftsmanship does the decorating and nobody felt the need to update anything. Order a pint and let the room do the talking.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The address arrives by email after you book, and even then it takes some finding. That's the point: The Blind Pig is a proper speakeasy cocktail bar tucked somewhere off Wicklow Street, named for the cops who looked the other way during Prohibition. The team behind it are among Dublin's most serious bartenders, and the whole production, the secrecy, the hidden entrance, lands as atmosphere rather than gimmick.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide