Who we are
Championing Dublin's built heritage
Dublin Civic Trust is an independent charitable organisation that works to identify, preserve and create awareness about Dublin’s architectural heritage.
As an educational trust, we promote best practice repair and conservation of historic buildings and streetscapes - involving identifying and recording the city’s built heritage, developing policy and skills training, and undertaking targeted acquisition and refurbishment of historic buildings as engaging demonstration projects. We are committed to sustainable urban development, understanding that creative new intervention and adaptation of existing buildings is essential to the evolution of historic cities everywhere.
Dublin’s status as a historic European capital of character and distinction is a resource of enormous social and economic value – one that has not been adequately developed to date. The work of the Trust is targeted at preserving and enhancing this built asset for the benefit of everyone, with an aspiration for Dublin as a living historic city that embraces this unique built identity.
To find out more about the Trust and its work, see below:
Building Projects 
Policies 
Courses + Seminars 
Previous Work 
Staff + Board
Our latest building restoration project at 18 Ormond Quay Upper
Background
Dublin Civic Trust was founded in 1992 as a non-governmental, educational trust with the aim of promoting greater recognition for the value of Dublin’s traditional buildings and streets.
Our main objectives include the preservation and enhancement of the historic core of the city, reuse of historic buildings in a manner that encourages active residential renewal, and the development of complementary uses that revitalise the social and cultural life of the city.
A key component of the Trust’s work is to lead by demonstration in the acquisition and refurbishment of properties that are of historical, architectural, archaeological and environmental interest for the public benefit. This has been successfully exercised through the Trust’s Revolving Fund mechanism, a process that involves training and education in traditional skills, development of best practice conservation techniques and streetscape enhancement.
21 Aungier Street, restored by Dublin Civic Trust in the 1990s
Advancing conservation
The Trust was founded at a time when there was no legal protection for historic buildings in Ireland, and a baseline survey of Dublin’s building stock had not yet been established. Since then, the Trust has undertaken pioneering surveys of large tracts of the city core, developed preservation and enhancement policies for individual streets and areas, and has been instrumental in saving a number of strategic historic buildings. We have also undertaken significant surveys of historic buildings across Ireland in places such as Mayo and Kilkenny.
Now that national legislation and local authority procedures give statutory protection to Ireland’s architectural heritage, the Trust has focused on developing best practice repair and conservation of buildings through a range of courses, seminars, publications and public conferences.
18 Ormond Quay Upper - our latest building project