St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin was built in the 13th Century to honour St. Patrick, who is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland. It is the main cathedral of the Church of Ireland, the Anglican communion.
The site, legend has it, is next to a well where St. Patrick baptised converts to Christianity way back in the 5th Century.
Construction of the current cathedral started in 1220, although there were other sacred buildings there before that, recorded as early as 890. These were probably made of wood.
The tower is known as Minot's Tower, after a former Archbishop of Dublin. It houses bells donated by the Guinness family in 1897.
Jonathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver's Travels, was a dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in the 18th century and is buried there.
An incident in the cathedral in 1492 resulted in the birth of the well-known expression “to chance your arm”.
Two families were feuding and one group took refuge in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The head of the other family urged them to come out and make peace. When they refused, he had a hole cut in a door and risked putting his arm through it in order to shake hands with his enemies — a lesson for us all.
The Door of Reconciliation is still on display, among countless other artefacts that make a visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral a fascinating experience.
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