Bank of Ireland College Green, James Joyce Tour

This building was originally designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce in 1729 to host the Irish Parliament. After the Acts of Union were passed in 1800 the building became defunct for that purpose and was bought by the Bank of Ireland in 1803. The former Parliament house served as the Bank of Ireland Headquarters until the 1970s but still remains operating as a working branch. In James Joyce's Ulysses Leopold Bloom, the book's hero and protagonist, sees pigeons flying about the building when he walks past and thinks “Before the huge high door of the Irish house of Parliament a flock of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black.”