16/04/2026
Today’s work in the studio. Dublin Landmarks The GPO — Heart of the Rising
On O’Connell Street, in the centre of Dublin, stands a building that has watched the city change, fall, and rise again — the General Post Office.
At first glance, it is a place of ordinary things. Letters posted. Parcels sent. Messages passing from one hand to another. A building built for connection.
But in the spring of 1916, it became something more.
On Easter Monday, as the city moved through what seemed like another ordinary day, a small group of men and women stepped forward and changed the course of Irish history. They chose this place — solid, central, unshaken — and from its steps, the Proclamation of the Republic was read aloud.
The GPO became their headquarters. Inside its walls, decisions were made not just for a moment, but for a nation yet to be born.
Outside, the city stirred with confusion, fear, and disbelief. Inside, there was resolve.
The columns you see here — strong and unyielding — stood through it all. Through the smoke, the gunfire, the fire that would leave the building in ruins. They remain today as they were then: witnesses.
The GPO is not just stone and structure. It is memory.
It is the echo of voices raised in hope.
It is the courage of those who stood when standing meant everything.
It is the quiet reminder that even the most ordinary places can become extraordinary.
Today, people pass by without a second thought — meeting friends, catching buses, going about their lives. And maybe that is its greatest legacy.
Because the GPO was never meant to stand apart from the people.
It was always meant to belong to them
