Adjoining St. Patrick's Cathedral, St Patrick's Park is believed to be the site of baptism of the first Irish Christians by St. Patrick, who used water from the River Poddle which now flows underground. St. Patrick's Park was created under the eponymous Act of 1897 by Lord Iveagh. Its layout was done by Arthur Dudgeon C.E. in 1901, and the park itself was opened to the public in 1904. Lord Iveagh had remained in charge of the park's maintenance for several years until Dublin Corporation completely took it over in the 1920s. With a children's playground inside, the park provides a beautiful setting for the cathedral. There were several additions to the park made in 1988, including a Literary Parade which pays tribute to Swift, Mangan, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Joyce, Behan, Beckett, Clarke and Dillon, and the Liberty Bell Sculpture.

Iveagh Gardens is a public park located behind the National Concert Hall. It is a lovely, calm place to spend an hour or so in the sun.

This beautiful park isn’t very large, but it full of things to see. It was first opened to the public in the early 19th century, but no-one took much care of it and it became something of a wilderness and the land might have been sold off for housing, if not for Benjamin Guinness who took it over and restored it in 1863 after Iveagh House was built. His son Edward gave the park to the University College of Dublin in 1908.

The Gardens are laid out in a harmonious blend of a French formal garden and an English landscaped garden. You will find hidden grottos and waterfalls, sunken lawns and fountains. In various places statues of Roman and Greek gods peer at you from the bushes.

There is a lovely box hedge maze to explore with its sundial in the centre, a well stocked rose garden and an American garden with mellow meadow-like grass and rockeries. You can stroll along the pathways, shaded by woodland trees or sit on a bench near the bronze statue of the 19th century tenor John McCormack.

If you don’t want to wait your turn in one of the busy restaurants in the shopping centre, the best thing to do is to pick up a sandwich and a drink and take it to Saint Stephen’s Green Park on the south end of Grafton Street.

This 27 acre park is the biggest of Dublin’s Georgian square parks. It was laid out in 1880 by Sir A. Guinness and is a delightful area to have your lunch, with its flower beds, shady walks, fountains and benches round a large ornamental lake where you can feed the ducks. In the summer open-air concerts are held here.

The rectangular park is surrounded by stately Georgian houses and is noted for its many statues and memorials. You will see a statue honouring Sir A. Guinness; a bronze statue of Theobald Wolfe Tone surrounded by monoliths (the locals call this “Tonehenge”); a fountain statue of the Three Fates, donated by German refugees after the Second World War; a statue of Robert Emmet and busts of James Joyce and Constance Markievcz.

Among the memorials are the Yeats Memorial Garden with its statue by Henry Moore; the Fusiliers Arch, a memorial to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in the Second Boer War; a monument to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, the Fenian leader and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a memorial of the Great Famine that caused so much death and misery in Ireland between 1845 and 1850.

One of the best places to relax is Merrion Square Park in the centre of Merrion Square, the most distinguished of the remaining Georgian squares in Dublin.

The park is a railed off garden, once for the exclusive use of the Square’s residents, but now open to the public. On Sundays in the summer the railings are festooned with paintings executed by local artists and it’s possible to pick up a wonderful landscape or portrait by an up and coming artist, at a reasonable price. Open-air concerts are also held in the park in the summer.

The gardens were laid out between 1762 and 1764 and since they have been opened to the public a children’s playground has been added. There is also a lovely floral garden and a heather garden. The park is full of statues and busts; the most notable is the “Jester’s Chair” which is a memorial to Dermot Morgan.

You can see a superb statue of Oscar Wilde relaxing on a quartz rock. It was sculpted by Danny Osborne in 1997 and shows the great man, dressed in his favourite green smoking jacket with red collar and cuffs, his expression enigmatic. The details of this statue are truly remarkable and you would almost expect him to get up and stroll off through the park, perhaps to the house on the square where he grew up.

The Garden of Remembrance (Irish: An Gairdín Cuimhneacháin) is a memorial garden in Dublin dedicated to the memory of "all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom". It is located in the northern fifth of the former Rotunda Gardens in Parnell Square (formerly Rutland Square), a Georgian square at the northern end of O'Connell Street. The Garden was designed by Dáithí Hanly. It is in the form of a sunken cruciform water-feature. Its focal point is a statue of the Children of Lir by Oisín Kelly, symbolising rebirth and resurrection, added in 1971.