Book of Kells

This is an 800-year-old manuscript that monks almost certainly got murdered over. The Book of Kells was created around 800 AD, probably begun on the Scottish island of Iona before a catastrophic Viking raid in 806 killed 68 monks and forced the survivors to flee to Kells in County Meath. They brought the unfinished manuscript with them, and somewhere between Iona and Kells, they completed one of the most lavishly decorated books in human history.

The book contains the four Gospels of the New Testament in Latin, but nobody comes here for the theology. They come for the decoration. Every single page is an explosion of interlocking spirals, fantastical animals, and impossibly intricate knotwork rendered in pigments sourced from across the known world — lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, kermes red from Mediterranean insects, orpiment yellow from arsenic sulfide. The monks who painted these pages were working with magnifying tools that wouldn't be invented for another five hundred years, yet some details are so fine they can only be seen under microscope.

The manuscript was stolen in 1007 — the Annals of Ulster record it being ripped from its jeweled cover and found months later buried under sod. It survived the English Reformation, Cromwell's armies, and centuries of neglect before landing at Trinity College in 1661, courtesy of Henry Jones, a former scoutmaster in Cromwell's army turned Bishop of Meath.

Today, two of its 680 pages are displayed at any one time, rotated every twelve weeks. You'll queue for it, you'll spend maybe three minutes in front of the glass case, and it will be worth every second. There is nothing else like it on earth.