Background

The National Photographic Archive houses all the photographic collections of the National Library of Ireland. The Collection comprises of almost 300,000 photographs.

Some Key Historical Collections from 1800's to early 1900's

• A large part of the Lawrence Collection is available on Microfiche. This consists of photographs of most of the towns and villages in Ireland taken in the between 1870 and 1914

• Eblana Collection; collection of 3000 glass plates of Ireland from 1800's

• Eason Collection; 4000 negatives from early to mid 1900's used to create Postcards for the famous Eason & Son bookshop in Dublin's O'Connell Street

• Valentine Collection; 3000 negative from early to mid 1900's.
• Wynne; 8000 glass negatives taken by local Newsagent from Castlebar from mid 1800's to 1900 showing life in Mayo.

This is only a sample of the collections available. For more details you should consult indexes in the Archives reading room, or the National Library.

Address 

National Photographic Archive

Meeting House Square

Temple Bar

Dublin 2

Opening Times

Monday to Friday 10.00am - 5.00pm

Saturday 10.00am - 2.00pm

(please note there is no access to the reading room on a Saturday)

Access

Admission to the National Archive is free.

To gain access to the readers room to view the material you will need a Reader's Ticket. You will need to apply to the National Photographic Archive in person for this.

To visit the official website of the National Photographic Archive, please click here   or to see where it is situated on a map of Dublin, click here .