"Dublin in Pictures" a Dublin Travel Page by bwk_michael

Dublin, (Irish: Baile Átha Cliath, is the largest city in Ireland and the capital of the Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region. Founded as a Viking settlement, the city has been Ireland's primary city for most of the island's history since mediæval times. Today, it is an economic, administrative and cultural centre for the island of Ireland, and has one of the fastest growing populations of any European capital city.

In a 2003 European-wide survey by the BBC, questioning 11,200 residents of 112 urban and rural areas, Dublin was the best capital city in Europe to live in, and Ireland the most content country in Europe.

The name Dublin is a Hiberno-English derivative of 'Dubh Linn' (Irish, dubh -> black, and linn -> pool). Historically, in the traditional Gaelic script used for the Irish language, 'bh' was written with a dot over the 'Linn' or 'Dublinn'. The French-speaking Normans omitted the dot and spelled the name variously as 'Develyn' or 'Dublin'.

Some sources doubt this derivation, and suggest that 'Dublin' is of Scandinavian origin, cf. Icelandic: djúp lind ('deep pond'). However, the name 'Dubh Linn' pre-dates the arrival of the Vikings in Ireland, and the Old Norse (and modern Icelandic) name for Dublin is simply the words 'Dubh Linn' re-spelled as if they were Old Norse: 'Dyflinn' (correctly pronounced "Duev-linn" — the letter 'y' is still pronounced like the vowel in 'ewe' in Modern Norwegian, Swedish, etc., just as it was in Old Norse; Icelandic, while keeping the spelling, has changed this sound to /i/).

The common name for the city in Modern Irish is 'Baile Átha Cliath' ('The Settlement of the Ford of the Reed Hurdles'), which refers to the settlement founded in 988 by High King Mael Sechnaill II, that adjoined the town of Dubh Linn proper at the Black Pool. It seems also that the seafaring Vikings and Normans thought of the place in terms of a pool deep enough for harbouring ships, while the Gaelic speakers saw the place in terms of a ford over a major river.

The first settlement was on the River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey, to the East of Christchurch, in the area known as Wood Quay. The Vikings chose this for defensive purposes, as the High King was always expected to attack from North of the Liffey. The Poddle was covered during the early 1800s, and as the city expanded it was forgotten about.

The city of Dublin is the entire area administered by Dublin City Council, but can also refer to the contiguous suburban areas that run into the adjacent counties of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. This area is sometimes known as 'Urban Dublin' or the 'Dublin Metropolitan Area'.

The population of the administrative area controlled by Dublin City Council was 505,739 at the census of 2006. At the same census, the Dublin Region population was 1,186,159, and the Greater Dublin Area 1,661,185. The city's population is expanding rapidly, and the Greater Dublin Area is estimated by the CSO to reach 2.1 million by 2021). Today, approximately 40% of the population of Ireland live within a 100 km fan radius of this east coast city