Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church Cathedral is located in the former heart of medieval Dublin, next to Wood Quay at the end of Lord Edward Street. The cathedral was founded sometime after 1028 when King Sitric Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin made a pilgrimage to Rome. The first bishop of this new Dublin diocese was Dúnán or Donat, and the diocese was at that time a small island of land surrounded by the much larger Diocese of Glendalough, and was for a time answerable to Canterbury rather than to the Irish Church hierarchy. The church was built on the high ground overlooking the Viking settlement at Wood Quay and Sitric gave the "lands of Baldoyle, Raheny and Portrane for its maintenance." Of the four old Celtic Christian churches reputed to have existed around Dublin, only one, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, lay within the walls of the Viking city, and so Christ Church was one of just two churches for the whole city.[ Christ Church is officially claimed as the seat of both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic archbishops of Dublin.