I've been meaning to check out the new museum building at Glasnevin Cemetery since it opened two years ago. The building is unusual for a cemetery but Glasnevin is an unusual cemetery. It was founded by the Liberator, Daniel O'Connell after he wrested Catholic Emancipation from the British. Churches and churchyard cemeteries passed into the hands of the established church - the Protestants - during the Reformation. Catholics were limited in where they could bury their dead by the Penal Laws. Catholic Emancipation eliminated the worst aspects of the Penal Laws, allowing for new churches to be built and cemeteries for the city to be opened.
Like Père Lachaise in Paris, everyone who was anyone in Dublin society is buried in Glasnevin. The history of the country - plagues, wars, revolutions - is written on the headstones.
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