Mountjoy Square: the north side's only true Georgian square
The one perfect square on the north side, the ghosts of Joyce and O'Casey, the run to Croke Park. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Gardiner Street approach
Walk up Gardiner Street from the Connolly end. It climbs steadily, lined with tall faded Georgian terraces that were once the grandest addresses in Dublin. The rise is gentle but real; you feel the square before you see it.

2. Mountjoy Square, south side
Arrive at the only genuinely square Georgian square in Dublin — each side exactly 140 metres. Stand at a corner and look along two sides at once. The south and east ranges are the best preserved; the symmetry is the whole reason to come.

3. The O'Casey houses, east side
Seán O'Casey lived on the east side and set Shadow of a Gunman in these rooms. The tenement Dublin of his plays was right here, behind the elegant fronts. Read the doors and imagine the crowded floors above them.

4. The central garden
The railed park in the middle, open to the public now after years locked. Go in and sit; from the centre the four ranges close around you and the traffic drops away. The best ten minutes on the north side.

5. Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street
Off the square's south-west corner, the Jesuit school where James Joyce was a pupil — the Belvedere of A Portrait of the Artist. The Georgian house has Michael Stapleton plasterwork inside; from the street, the doorcase is the tell.

6. Croke Park view, toward Clonliffe
Walk north-east out of the square toward Jones's Road and the great bowl of Croke Park rises ahead — the home of Gaelic games and the site of the first Bloody Sunday in 1920. You needn't go in; the scale from the street is the point. Buses back run from Gardiner Street.

Mountjoy Square: the north side's only true Georgian square