If you visit The Palace today, you will soon realise that little has changed here over the past century and a half. It was then, and still is one of Dublin’s most popular city pubs, untarnished and unspoiled by the passage of time.

You may very well reflect that most of the older vintage of Dublin pubs, which have been preserved for us, are of the later Victorian period, the Palace appears somewhat different. This is because the design of the premises was earlier than the Victorian period. Early in the 19th century Patrick Hall was the landlord here and he also ran a grocery shop next door. He would have been familiar with the eighteen years old Volunteer, Kevin Barry, who was born nearby at No. 8, Fleet Street and was hanged by the British at Mountjoy Jail in 1920 for his part in the ambush of the bakery in Church Street during the Irish War of Independence.

The execution of a boy at such tender years caused outrage both in the world press and with the Irish public and subsequently inspired the ballad song ‘Kevin Barry’.

It was, however, during the 1940s and 1950s that ‘The Palace Bar’ attained the pinnacle of its fame, when it became the literary social home of the ‘Fourth Estate’, the ‘Literati’ of Dublin. This era coincided with the arrival of the Aherne family, who purchased the premises from the ‘Widow Ryan’ in 1946. The Ahernes like the Widow Ryan, were natives of Tipperary, a county which has consistently played a high profile in the Dublin licensed trade. At that time, John Ryan tells us in his stimulating book ‘Remembering How We Stood’ that The Palace and the Pearls bars were the haunts of the established and the aspiring literati and burrows of….. He also tells us that:

“Heavier or more sustained drinking took place in the Pearl (now closed) and Palace during these years may never have occurred before or will again”.     History & Literature Continued