Trinity College: Ireland's most prestigious university

Trinity College has nothing to envy Harvard, Yale, Cambridge or any of the other renowned universities in the United States, since the University of Dublin is none other than Europe's most prestigious university. Its corridors have been walked by many of the world's elite, including Samuel Becket, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Oscar Wilde, the famous Irish playwright, and Ernest Walton, a leading light in the field of science, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951.

If Trinity College can boast of being the most prestigious of Irish universities, it can also boast of being the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as the 'mother of universities', under the official name of College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin.

While the austere architecture is a reminder of the serious nature of the site, the various buildings are set in a pleasant, open space where you can stroll and wander. All are set in their own green spaces. Visitors and students alike love walking around College Park, an open-air area dedicated to sports (cricket, rugby, running and hurling).

Not forgetting one of the highlights of the campus: The Old Library, which closes off the south side of the campus and where you can admire unique works and the illustrated book "The Book of Kells".

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament. The complexity, detail and majesty of its illustrations make it priceless.

As a result, it is preserved in a setting just as unique as it is: The Old Library of Trinity College, in the heart of the university. This is the largest library in Ireland. Most visitors are impressed by its grandeur, with huge shelves of ancient books, ladders and busts of great thinkers guarding each section.