Michael visits Kilmainham Gaol, where the captured leaders of the rebellion were imprisoned and executed by firing squad. He also goes to Glasnevin Cemetery, where 1.5 million Dubliners, including generations of independence heroes, are buried.
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Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, Ireland. The final resting place for many legendary Irish nationalist heroes. (William Murphy/Wikimedia Commons)
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Sunday Edition35:47Kilmainham Gaol and Glasnevin Cemetery
The leaders of the rebellion who surrendered to the British failed in their impossible dream of forging a republic out of the rubble of the General Post Office on O'Connell Street. But Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Tom Clarke and the rest of the rebels did achieve a kind of immortality in an imposing stone fortress in the west of Dublin.
Cells inside Kilmainham Gaol where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were held before being executed. (Susan Mahoney)It's just down and across the street from the Hilton Hotel, where all the meeting rooms are named after rebel leaders.
Kilmainham Gaol was built by the English in 1796, originally as a debtors' prison. It released its last prisoners in 1924. The cells which held the famous Irish insurgents are identified - Robert Emmett, Michael Collins, and Countess Markievicz. Michael's guide is Conor Masterson.
Front entrance, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin (Nol Aders/Wikimedia)The 1916 rebels were executed in Kilmainham's stone-breaking yard.
The stone-breaking yard in Kilmainham Gaol, where the rebel leaders were executed. (Chris Wodskou)The methodical brutality of the executions - especially that of the badly wounded James Connolly - inflamed Irish sensibilities and enraged even those who had opposed the Rising.
"Proclamation" by Rowan Gillespie; a sculpture honouring the leaders of the Easter Rising, and the authors of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. (Chris Wodskou)
The bodies of the 14 executed at Kilmainham were taken to the military cemetery at Arbour Hill, dumped into a mass grave and covered in quicklime, all denied the honour of burial in Glasnevin Cemetery, Ireland's great resting place.
As you enter Glasnevin, directly ahead is the 168-foot O'Connell monument, towering over the tomb of the man who began the cemetery in 1832 because Catholics were denied their own burying ground. Daniel O'Connell insisted that Glasnevin be for people of all faiths and none. There are one and a half million people buried in its 124 acres. Celtic crosses - row after row of them - mark the graves. It is a solemn place; no part of the acreage more so than the Republicans' Plot.
Irish President Eamon de Valera (1882 - 1975, under cross) speaking at the funeral of Irish nationalist Roger Casement (1864 - 1916) at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, 2nd March 1965. Casement's remains had been removed from England, where he was hanged for high treason, and reburied in Dublin. (Getty Images)The seeds of the 1916 Easter Rising were planted in Glasnevin two years earlier, when Patrick Pearse delivered an oration at the funeral of legendary nationalist warrior Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. Michael's guide is Paddy Gleeson.
