National Museum of Ireland, Natural History, Dublin

The National Museum of Ireland, Natural History is the Dublin museum often called the Dead Zoo, housed on Merrion Street. Its zoological displays preserve a Victorian interior that has changed little, creating the unusual feeling of a museum of a museum. The building opened in August 1857, after being constructed for the Royal Dublin Society’s collections; its building and contents later passed to the State.

Look at the mounted animals and skeletons arranged through the galleries: the museum displays 10,000 specimens from around the world. The Irish Room gathers native fauna, including mounted skeletons of giant Irish deer, with deer skulls lining the walls and a basking shark suspended from the ceiling. A thylacine and a pygmy hippopotamus appear among mammals from elsewhere in the world, while a polar bear belonged to Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock.

Above the accessible galleries, a humpback whale and fin whale skeleton hang from the ceiling, and a composite dodo skeleton comes from Mauritius. The collection as a whole contains over 2 million zoological and geological items, including a million insects. The building was designed by Frederick Clarendon, with cast iron framing, timber within the upper floors, and granite and Portland stone outside.