The national Museum of Ireland specializes in Irish art, culture and natural history.

The Museum was founded on August 14, 1877, by special act of the Irish Parliament. On Kildare street in Dublin, a special building was built, which was opened in 1890. In the new Museum were exhibited coins, medals, the most important archaeological finds, including the Arda Cup and the Tara brooch, as well as ethnographic and geological collections.

First, the Museum was called the Dublin Museum of science and art, then the national Museum of science and art, and since 1921 it is called the national Museum of Ireland. Like any Museum national scale, the national Museum lacked and exhibition space, and storage space for collections. In 1994 the Museum was transferred to Collins barracks is a complex of buildings of the XVIII-XIX centuries. the First part of the exposition was opened there in September 1997. Another branch of the Museum located in the town of Mayo.

Now the Museum has nearly 4 million artifacts, of which almost two million are related to archaeology. Presented here is the gold era of the ancient Celts, the pieces made in the early middle ages, and finds from the Viking age. Some of the findings gained worldwide fame and became a symbol of Celtic art. This, for example, bowls Arda and Derrynaflan – ornate silver vessels, the Tara brooch is a masterpiece of jewelry art of the time, the Golden boat from the treasure of Broiler.

Ethnographic collections of the Museum were collected in the farthest corners of the world: Polynesia, South America, West Africa, etc. section of applied art and history tell you about the culture of the country and its inhabitants over the past two millennia.

Museum of natural history (part of the National Museum of Ireland) is often called a "Museum in a Museum", because now we can see its almost the same as it looked in 1856.