Nelson's Pillar

Nelson Pillar (universally referred to as Nelson's Pillar) was a large granite pillar with a statue of Lord Nelson on top, located in the centre of O'Connell Street in Dublin. Erected in honour of Admiral Horatio Nelson in the early nineteenth century, it offered Dubliners the city's best public viewing platform. It was designed by Thomas Johnson, the architect who built the General Post Office (to the left of the picture opposite). Johnson and later architects laid out Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) so that the buildings, the GPO and the Pillar were in scale to the size and length of the street and to each other. Nelson's Pillar was controversially blown up without warning early one morning in 1966 by republicans. A number of pedestrians and motorists had near escapes as large chunks of stone from the monument were flung around the vicinity.

A new monument, known as the Spire of Dublin, was erected on the long vacant site in January 2003.