THE FINAL resting place of more than 1.5 million people, including Daniel O’Connell, Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins, yesterday became Dublin’s newest tourist attraction with the opening of the Glasnevin Cemetery Museum.
The €11 million museum is expected to attract up to 200,000 visitors a year and provide €1.5 million to €2 million for the ongoing maintenance of Ireland’s largest cemetery and its monuments, including the O’Connell Tower.
The museum has three main exhibits: the City of the Dead, housed in the basement and providing an evocatively eerie setting for details of burial practices and records of the dead; the Milestone Gallery, which will have changing exhibitions on historical figures and currently features Daniel O’Connell; and the Prospect Gallery, which offers views of the cemetery and details of its most important features.
It also houses an archive room where the original burial records dating back to the cemetery’s foundation in 1832 are kept and a cafe and gift shop. Speaking at the opening yesterday, Glasnevin Trust chairman John Green said the museum would enable the trust to maintain the cemetery to the highest standards.
“As a charity the trust’s primary role will always be to provide services for the burial or cremation of the dead with dignity.
“However, the age and scale of the cemetery means that the cost of maintaining the cemetery to the highest standards cannot be realised from burial services alone.”
He added that the funds would help ensure that the new Angel’s Plot was “appropriately restored, memorialised and maintained”.
A great-great-great-grandson of the “Liberator” and his namesake, Daniel O’Connell, said the museum would illustrate for people the principles on which O’Connell founded the cemetery.
“The cemetery was founded to bring together people of all religions and give everyone a place they could be buried with dignity, and I think people will take that from this museum.”
Admission to the museum is €6 for adults and €4 for children.
