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Comment by patrickdavey | Hacker News Reader

I went to college in Trinity and the Book of Kells is housed in the old library.

Once you've finished seeing the book, you head upstairs through the Long Room, and that place is just special (they used it as the hall of the jedi)

As a student there you could visit for free. I used to just go up and hang in the library for 10 mins or so a few times a year. Loved it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Trinity_College_D...

Edit: fix link

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First name checks out :)

I promised a coworker up north a bit in Meath that one day I’d come visit him and got that chance about seven years ago. Along the way we did the tourist in Dublin thing and part of it was the trinity long room and book of kells. Amusingly, a cabbie was asking me what I loved about Dublin and I said the history. He asked what in specific and I told him that there is probably chewing gum on the ground older than the founding of the United States. He got super offended and told me they clean the streets in Ireland, but then I mentioned the Aran Islands, Newgrange, and the Drombeg Stone Circle… What is “old” in Ireland is 3000-5000 years old. What is “old” in the USA is a few hundred years old at best.

Such a lovely place and people.

Lots of old things/places in the US too if you don’t disregard native history.

If you are counting stone circles, it seems unfair not to count 5000 year old mounds in the US.

The Drombeg stone circle is like stone henge’s grandfather.

Dromberg looks great and Stonehenge is definitely far too crowded with tourists[0] but with respect to age Dromberg is considered to be 3000 years old [1] versus Stone henge being 5000 years old [2]

I will resist the temptation to joke about time travelling aliens

0 - Why do the tourists have so many Disney shirts, hats, and backpacks???

1 - https://www.tuatha.ie/drombeg-stone-circle/

2 - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/...

My attempt to answer question 0 - apart from the most obvious answer, that it's a global megabrand present in every culture that is connected with the global mainstram, so it's like asking why do so many tourists drink Coke and eat at McD's - underpinning a great deal of what Disney does creatively is a collective longing for myth, magic, mystery and timeless stories that reach back through the ages. People who like that kind of stuff (i.e. an awfully large percentage of humans) and who happen to be passing through that part of England will be inevitably drawn to those big ol' stones rising out of the mist...

I also did the same thing. I probably visited 30 times in the 5 years I was there. The postgraduate study room next door to it (disc shaped building between the old library and the front gate) is probably one of the neatest student spaces in the university, closely followed by the geography building behind it.

Unfortunately, they recently removed most of the books from that hall due to conservation efforts. I didn't really give the feel or atmosphere of an old library.

I once had a class in a room just off the old library. I had to go into the Long Room and step over a rope at the end. Very cool.

We had a big poster of the Long Room in the Harvard Law Library. (Employee, not student.) Gorgeous. Always looked at it walking past.

My only experience with the Book of Kells that age was working in an absolutely disgusting nightclub named after it. I was rather surprised to see how beautiful its namesake book was

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