Macartney Bridge carries Baggot Street across the Grand Canal. The name may conjure up visions of gondolas, but this rather depressing stretch of urban waterway is more commonly adorned with the rusting skeletons of shopping trolleys and stolen bicycles. Turn your back on it and walk up Baggot Street Lower to Doheny & Nesbitt at No. 5. Doheny & Nesbitt looks as if it has been here forever, and the building it stands in is indeed more than 130 years old. The eponymous landlords hung up their sign here less than 50 years ago, but for at least half a century this has been the place where Ireland’s politicians and spin-doctors come if they want to leak a story to a favoured journalist over a drink or two. Glass-panelled booths give patrons just the right amount of privacy for a privileged, off-the-record conversation. It is favoured by Dublin’s legal eagles.

On leaving Doheny & Nesbitt turn right, continue along Baggot Street Lower, lined with gracious townhouses (many of them with the bright-painted, brass-furnished doors that are emblematic of Georgian Dublin), and cross Lad Lane, Fitzwilliam Street Upper, Pembroke Street Lower and Ely Place, to Merrion Row and O’Donoghue’s. With its windows adorned with antique stout bottles, oil lanterns and other paraphernalia, O’Donoghue’s resembles one of the franchised Irish pubs that have spread across the world like a creeping rash since the 1990s. But it has, in fact, been here for decades, and has a special place in the hearts of Irish folk music fans as the spot that gave folk pioneers The Dubliners their first regular gig, back in the 1950s. It still hosts informal folk sessions most evenings and weekends.

Turn left out of the pub and continue along Merrion Row to St Stephen’s Green. Cross St Stephen’s Green North, then take the first right up Kildare Street with the National Museum and National Library on your right, to Leinster Street. Cross the street to College Park. Turn left and walk for 150m (xxyds) to enter Trinity College by the Douglas Hyde Gate, opposite Dawson Street. Follow signs for College Park. Walk anticlockwise round the park to return to the college’s cobbled square and exit the college from the Front Gate on to College Green. Go round to the right to College Street. Cross Townsend Street into Hawkins Street then turn right on to Poolbeg Street where Mulligan’s is ahead on the left. John F. Kennedy is said to have enjoyed a pint here in honour of his Irish heritage when he visited Dublin in 1945. James Joyce was another visitor, and the pub gets more than one name-check in his work; he even named one of his characters in Ulysses after it. In Joyce’s day, this was a proper Dublin working man’s spit-and-sawdust pub, where a balanced diet was a drink in each hand and drinking was done standing up, to maximize the place’s rascular density (defined as the number of rascals per square yard of floor space). It’s a bit more civilized now – they even let women in – but it is still a classic example of a real Dublin boozer, with worn wood counter tops in abundance, and some say it has the best Guinness in the world.

Leaving Mulligan’s, retrace your steps to the main entrance of Trinity College. Cross the busy junction to the left side of College Green. Continue and take the first left into Church Lane that leads into Suffolk Street. O’Neill’s is on the left, opposite the corner of St Andrew Street and the tourist information office, at 121 Suffolk Street. A triple-faced clock-cum-bar sign juts out from the first storey of this old red-brick pub, above a sturdy double-fronted window flanked by dark mahogany doors and dark-green woodwork picked out with white stucco embellishments. This pub has been known as O’Neill’s since 1927, but it has been in existence for at least 300 years, and the site on which it stands has an even longer pedigree. Around 1,000 years ago it was the site of the Viking parliament called the Thing; in 1172, English King Henry II received the submission of many of the Irish chiefs on this same spot. And in the late 18th century, Arthur O’Connor published a newspaper from these premises in support of Wolfe Tone’s United Irishmen and the failed rising of 1798.

From O’Neills, cross Suffolk Street and turn left. At the next corner, turn right on to the west side of Grafton Street. Take the third turning on your right into Harry Street, a short, narrow street with McDaids at No. 3, across from the Westbury Hotel. This is one of Dublin’s great writers’ pubs, with a grand Victorian front, all arches, stained glass and dark red paintwork, and a list of former clients that reads like a Who’s Who of Irish literary reprobates of the 20th century, from Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh to Flann O’Brien and J. P. Donleavy.

Retrace your steps to the corner of Harry Street and Grafton Street and turn right. Take the next right down Chatham Street, cross the bottom of Clarendon Street on your right and then turn right up William Street South. Follow this street for two blocks to its north end and then turn left on Exchequer Street. Cross over to the north side, and take the next turning on your right into Dame Court. The Stag’s Head, at 1 Dame Court, is a grand example of Victorian pub design and a veritable drinker’s palace, with its ceiling-high, gilt-trimmed mirrors on the walls, bull’s-eye glass in the windows, and a massive marble bar top. James Joyce is said to have done some drinking here – but then every pub in Dublin seems to claim him as a former regular.

Walk to the north end of Dame Court and the corner of Dame Lane. Turn left here, then almost immediately right to Dame Street. Cross the street, walk to the corner of Parliament Street (opposite City Hall) and turn right towards the river. When you reach the riverside, cross over, turn left and walk along first Essex Quay, then Wood Quay and finally Merchant’s Quay. At the corner of Bridge Street, turn left to No. 20 and The Brazen Head. The Brazen Head claims to be Dublin’s oldest pub. The records show that there was a tavern here as early as 1198, but there have been a few changes over the last 800 years. Cross Father Mathew Bridge and turn right to follow the quays along the north bank of the Liffey and return to O’Connell Street.