Four Courts

The Four Courts is where Irish law has been argued and decided for over two centuries, and it's also where a thousand years of Irish records went up in smoke during a single catastrophic afternoon. James Gandon designed this building too — the man had a near-monopoly on Dublin's finest public architecture — and it was completed in 1802. The distinctive copper dome and Corinthian portico overlooking the Liffey make it one of the most recognizable buildings in the city.

In April 1922, roughly 200 Anti-Treaty IRA fighters occupied the Four Courts in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty that had partitioned Ireland. For two months they held the building in a tense standoff. Then on June 28, the Provisional Government of the new Irish Free State began bombarding them with artillery — two 18-pounder field guns borrowed from the British, positioned across the river. The irony was excruciating: the first act of the new Irish state was to shell its own courthouse.

After 375 artillery rounds and 60 hours of fighting, the garrison surrendered. But the worst damage came from an explosion in the Public Record Office, housed in the western block. Whether the blast was caused by shells igniting republican munitions stores or a deliberate detonation is still debated. Either way, a mushroom cloud rose 200 feet over the building, and a millennium of irreplaceable Irish records — birth certificates, wills, church registers, land deeds dating back to the medieval period — was turned to confetti. Charred documents rained down across Dublin for hours.

The building was reconstructed in the late 1920s and still serves as Ireland's principal courts building. Lawyers in wigs and gowns hurry through corridors where artillery shells once punched through walls.