Our philosophy and approach: With our long-standing expertise in art and architectural history, our guided walking tours are loved by people interested in visual culture and historic context. Our passion is to show you the less-obvious, more hidden away treasures of Dublin, including many treasures hidden in plain sight. We use the built and visible fabric of the city to interpret the history of Dublin, from people, politics and literature to industry, economics and revolution. Our approach makes us the tour of choice for determined urban explorers and for the intellectually curious. From our experience with over 7,000 guests over more than 8 years, and from the feedback we receive, we think you’ll find the experience a revelation.
Our guiding principle is to help you read the city, its streets, buildings, street plan, pointing out everything from underground rivers to architectural oddities, craved dates or inscriptions, or an allegorical sculpture on buildings; then helping decode that information for you. It’s what we do best. The same applies to our much loved private art tours of the National Gallery of Ireland, where we take a similar symbol-reading approach with the lovely art works there.
Dublin Decoded tours are led by writer and local historian Arran Henderson, a Dublin native with a passion for historic research and for communicating the city’s many treasures: whether concealed behind closed doors, or hidden in plain view. Arran’s knowledge of the capital’s history and buildings has seen him featured in the Wall Street Journal and The Irish Times.
Arran trained originally in Art History, has various graduate and undergraduate degrees, and was educated in Ireland, England and the US, including the National College of Art and Design, Oxford Brooks, Central St Martins London, and the Dublin Institute of Technology/TUD. He has also studied in Trinity College Dublin alongside his tour work. Arran has appeared on radio and written for the Irish Arts Review among other publications and for the last 5 years he has designed and led the annual Dublin walking tours for the Irish Georgian Society, and led tours for Culture Night, the Irish Architecture Foundation, Open House Dublin, Dublin City Libraries’ Festival of History and the Trinity College Architecture Society. On smaller group and private tours, he has hosted figures from business, medicine, law and the arts and entertainment, several cabinet ministers and a current European prime minister. You will not find a better guide.
Dublin Decoded offers two types of tours: public and private. We generally run two or three public tours each month. To see which public tours are coming up, please see the “Public Tours” page on this website here. Our other specialty is high-quality, private tours, where you book the whole tour, on a date of your own choosing, exclusively for your own group. Private tour groups can typically be anything from a family or friends celebrating a special occasion (everyone from holiday-makers to a book club outing) to companies, corporate excursions, schools or colleges and universities. The way to book a private tour is to look at the featured tours on our Private Tours pages, find the tour you want to do, then press the green “Book Now” button!
We look forward to welcoming you on tour.
Below; Dublin Decoded on Twitter @dubdecodedtours
Guests on our epic, 3.5 hour walk around Dublin’s Medieval Walls today, in the lovely refurbished St Audoen’s Park; within the church; and at journeys end (the survivors photo!) at Grace Weir’s Viking Wall. Thank you so much to everyone who came. You were absolute troopers! pic.twitter.com/8H2uEu6NqW
— Dublin Decoded Tours (@dubdecodedtours) September 14, 2019
