The Parnell Monument is the 19-metre granite obelisk with a bronze statue at the north end of O'Connell Street in Dublin, honouring Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), the Home Rule leader once called the 'uncrowned king of Ireland'. The statue is by the Dublin-born sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and it faces down the street towards Daniel O'Connell's monument at the other end. On its south side, in gilt letters, are Parnell's most quoted words: 'No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.'
Parnell Monument at a glance
- Where: on a round island at the top of O'Connell Street, where it meets Parnell Street and Parnell Square.
- Built: foundation stone laid on 8 October 1899; unveiled on 1 October 1911.
- By: statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens; obelisk designed by the American architect Henry Bacon.
- What it is today: a protected monument in the O'Connell Street conservation area, closing the line of statues along the street.
- Time needed: 5–10 minutes, longer if you stop to read the inscriptions.
Twelve years to raise a monument
Parnell led the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1880s and pushed Home Rule and land reform onto the agenda in Westminster. His career collapsed in 1890, when his long relationship with Katharine O'Shea came out in a divorce case and split the party, and he died the following October. When a statue of the British prime minister William Gladstone was proposed for Dublin in 1898, Dublin Corporation resolved that no statue of any Englishman should go up in the city until Ireland had raised a fitting monument to Parnell.
John Redmond, Parnell's successor as party leader, took up the project. The foundation stone was laid at the top of Sackville Street, as O'Connell Street was then called, on 8 October 1899, at a ceremony marred by the old split: many members of the party, magistrates and clergy stayed away. Money was short, so a delegation including Redmond and the Lord Mayor toured the United States to raise funds and was received by President McKinley. Saint-Gaudens took on the statue, and it was the last public monument he saw to completion before his death in 1907. The finished monument was unveiled on 1 October 1911, twenty years after Parnell's death.
What to look for
- Parnell's pose: the bronze figure stands with one arm outstretched, as if in the middle of a speech.
- The gilt inscription on the south face: the line about the march of a nation, from a speech Parnell gave in Cork in 1885, with a harp below.
- The Irish inscription: 'Go soirbhighidh Dia Éire dá clainn', meaning 'May God make Ireland flourish for her people', in the old Gaelic script.
- The provinces and counties: bronze lettering on the pedestal names Ireland's four provinces, and the panels of the obelisk carry the names of its counties.
- The top of the obelisk: a bronze tripod holding a flame, and lower down a carved garland with ox skulls at the corners.
Ivy Day
Parnell died on 6 October 1891, and for years his supporters marked the anniversary by wearing a sprig of ivy, a custom known as Ivy Day; the foundation stone was laid two days after the eighth anniversary. James Joyce, whose family were Parnellites, set one of the stories in Dubliners, 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room', on that date. Parnell himself is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, under a simple granite boulder from his home county of Wicklow.
Tips for your visit
- The monument stands on a traffic island: cross only at the lights and watch for buses and the Luas trams.
- For the full view, stand a little way down O'Connell Street and look north: the statue, the gilt lettering and the obelisk line up against the Rotunda behind.
- The south face, with the inscriptions, gets the best light around midday.
Nearby
- Garden of Remembrance: the memorial garden on Parnell Square, opened in 1966, dedicated to all who died for Irish freedom.
- Rotunda Hospital: one of the oldest maternity hospitals in the world, right behind the monument.
- Hugh Lane Gallery: Dublin's modern art gallery in Charlemont House on Parnell Square, home of Francis Bacon's reconstructed studio.
- The GPO and the Spire: the headquarters of the 1916 Rising and the steel needle opposite it, a few minutes' walk down O'Connell Street.
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Facts checked in October 2026.