Sandymount Promenade

Name: Sandymount Promenade
Address: Strand Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4, Sandymount, Dublin, IE
Telephone: 01 222 5278

Overview

Sandymount Promenade runs along Strand Road beside Sandymount Strand, with wide views across Dublin Bay to the Poolbeg chimneys, Howth and Dún Laoghaire. It is one of the city's favourite places for a seaside walk, a run or a breath of sea air.

Along the way you pass a Martello tower from 1804 and a striking sculpture, and there is an outdoor gym.

The Martello tower

About halfway along the promenade stands the Sandymount Martello tower, completed in 1804. Some 50 of these round towers were built around the Irish coast against a feared invasion by Napoleon, 28 of them around Dublin. The name comes from a tower at Mortella in Corsica.

The towers were typically 12 to 15 metres wide and two storeys high, with thick walls facing the sea and a single door five metres up, reached by a ladder. Sandymount's was one of the larger ones, with a building attached for up to 20 soldiers. The invasion never came, and the tower was later used as an office by the Dublin United Tramways Company and then as a restaurant.

Art and nature

At the northern end of the promenade is An Cailín Bán, a sculpture by the Mexican artist Sebastián, donated by the Mexican government and put up in 2002. The strand and its mudflats are a protected conservation area, important for wading birds and Brent geese in winter.

Getting there

The promenade runs along Strand Road, Dublin 4, from Irishtown towards Merrion. Sandymount and Sydney Parade DART stations are each about ten minutes' walk away. See our guide to Sandymount Strand, and walk to Sandymount Green in the village or on towards the Poolbeg Lighthouse.