St Stephen's Green is a 22-acre public park at the south end of Grafton Street, in continuous use as a common since the 1660s. It was enclosed as a private garden for residents of the surrounding Georgian streets in 1814, and opened to the public again in 1880 after Arthur Edward Guinness paid for its remodelling as a Victorian pleasure garden.
The park is busy at lunchtime with office workers from the surrounding streets, and pleasant to walk through in any season. The formal Victorian layout — an ornamental lake with ducks, neat paths, a bandstand — feels like a set piece of 19th-century city planning. The Fusiliers' Arch at the Grafton Street entrance commemorates the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in the Boer War. Several statues are scattered around the paths, including a monument to Wolfe Tone, leader of the 1798 rebellion.
During the 1916 Easter Rising, the park was held by ICA forces under Constance Markievicz. British troops on the rooftop of the Shelbourne Hotel fired down on the rebels below.