Museums - National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology

The National Museum of Ireland was founded in 1877 as the Science and Art Museum, which brought together collections previously held at Leinster House and the Natural History Museum in Dublin's Merrion Street, both repositories for the Royal Dublin Society, as well as material from the Royal Irish Academy and the Museum of Irish Industry. A dedicated museum building to house the combined, steadily growing collections was built at the NMI's current location on Kildare Street, which opened in 1890. The new Victorian Palladian-style building, now a longtime Dublin landmark, was designed by Cork architects Thomas Newenham Deane and his son Thomas Manly Deane. In 1900, the museum was renamed the National Museum of Science and Art, and with the foundation of the Irish Free State came to be known as the National Museum of Ireland. Reflecting this change, collecting interests shifted from natural history to material of specifically Irish origin, and the museum became primarily an institution dedicated to Irish history and heritage from prehistoric times until the end of the Medieval period and beyond.
Numbering over two million objects, the museum's archaeological collections comprise the premier repository of Irish artifacts, containing such world-renowned treasures as the Ardagh Chalice, 'Tara' Brooch, and Derrynaflan Hoard, as well as additional collections of Viking, Classical Mediterranean, Egyptian, and international tribal artifacts. The ethnographic holdings date from between 1760 and 1914 and represent a wide range of world cultures. Reflecting Irish exploration and missionary expeditions from the eighteenth century through the present, the collections include objects from Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, North and South America, West and South Africa, and South and East Asia.