Georgian Dublin, the traditional city, has been restored to its former grace and grandeur. Its elegant streets and squares and its major architectural monuments provide the old city with an infrastructure from which new, hip neighborhoods have arisen. New Dublin is represented by the rejuvenated neighborhood of Temple Bar, the city's own "Left Bank." Its eighteenth-century streets are now home to a heady mixture of art centers and galleries, bars, restaurants, clubs, and shops. Major features in the book evoke the stylish residences of the new Dublin, the lifestyles and homes of the city's social, artistic, and commercial elite—from opulent, traditional Georgian to spare modernist and the very latest in urban loft conversions.

Dublin's social tradition is represented in the hotels and parks, shops, bars, and racetracks—all alive with the resurgent excitement of the city. And the book explores the city's special relationship with the literary life, from Jonathan Swift to Roddy Doyle—not to mention Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Joyce, O'Casey, and Beckett—whose impact never fades. Living in Dublin is a visual delight, completed by listings of places to stay and eat and a guide to the sights of the city.