Irish Museum of Modern Art

Gravel crunches under your shoes as you cross the courtyard. Around you, long rows of tall windows look down from four sides. The arcades along the ground floor are cool and shadowed, and your footsteps echo softly under the arches. It is quiet here, surprisingly quiet for a place only a short walk from central Dublin. And then you notice it: inside these old walls, someone has hung contemporary art.

This is the Irish Museum of Modern Art, usually called IMMA. Ireland's national collection of modern and contemporary art lives here. But the building around you is far older than anything on its walls. You are standing inside the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a building from the late seventeenth century. That contrast is the whole idea of this place: brand-new art inside one of the oldest classical buildings in Ireland.

The word hospital can mislead you. This was never a place for surgery or the sick in the modern sense. It was a home for old and wounded soldiers, men who had served in the army and had nowhere else to go. The idea came from James Butler, the Duke of Ormonde, who governed Ireland for the English Crown. Work began in the 1680s, and the first veterans moved in soon after.

Ormonde took his inspiration from Paris. There, King Louis the Fourteenth had built Les Invalides, a vast home for retired French soldiers. The Dublin version is smaller and plainer, but the plan is similar. The living quarters, the dining hall and the chapel all face one enclosed courtyard. The design is usually credited to William Robinson, who was Surveyor General of Ireland at the time. Many historians call it the finest seventeenth-century building in the country.

Take a moment to look at the surfaces. The walls are rendered and painted a pale, warm tone. The windows are tall and evenly spaced, in strict rows. There is very little decoration on the outside. That restraint was new in Ireland at the time. Most Irish buildings of the period were castles, tower houses or modest town houses. This was something different: a calm, symmetrical, classical building, designed for order rather than defence.

Now look up at the north range, where the clock tower and slender spire rise above the roofline. Below them sit the most important rooms. One is the Great Hall, where the pensioners once ate together at long tables. The other is the chapel. If it is open when you visit, go inside. This is where the building keeps its finest craftsmanship, and it is easy to walk past without knowing.

Inside the chapel, the woodwork around the altar is carved in deep, lively detail — fruit, flowers, leaves and small figures. Look up, too, at the ceiling, which is richly moulded. Here is a detail most visitors never learn. The original plaster ceiling became unsafe in the nineteenth century. It was replaced with a careful copy made of papier-mâché. So the ceiling above you is a faithful replica, not the seventeenth-century original.

For more than two centuries, old soldiers lived here. Some had fought in campaigns across Europe and the wider British Empire. Life followed a military routine of meals, prayers and rules. Then Ireland changed. After independence, the soldiers' home no longer fitted the new state, and the last pensioners left in the late 1920s. The building then had other uses, including a period as police offices, before it slowly fell quiet.

By the later twentieth century, the old hospital needed serious repair. A major restoration took place in the 1980s, and the building returned to public life. Then, in 1991, the Irish Museum of Modern Art opened here. Before that, Ireland had no national institution dedicated to modern art. The choice of this building surprised some people. A soldiers' home from the 1680s, filled with video, installation and abstract painting? Yet the long corridors and plain rooms suit the art well.

The former living quarters now serve as galleries. Walk through them and notice the proportions. The rooms are repeated one after another, a little like cells in a honeycomb, because they once held the soldiers' beds. The collection includes Irish and international artists, and exhibitions change regularly. You may find painting, sculpture, photography, film or sound. Expect to be challenged rather than soothed. That is part of the point here.

The grounds are worth as much time as the galleries. To one side lie formal gardens, laid out in geometric beds with clipped hedges and gravel paths. They have been restored to recall their historic design. Beyond them, a wide meadow opens out, and on a dry day people sit on the grass. Sculptures sometimes appear in the grounds as well. From certain points, you can see across the rooftops of west Dublin.

Near the edge of the grounds is an old burial ground known as Bully's Acre. It is one of the oldest cemeteries in Dublin, and it was in use long before the hospital was built. Locals tell many stories about it, and some are clearly legend rather than record. One popular tale links it to ancient kings and warriors. Whatever the truth, the worn stones are a reminder that this hill held meaning for centuries.

Before you leave, stand once more in the courtyard. Listen to the gravel, the distant traffic, the voices fading under the arcades. Think of the old soldiers who walked these same paths, slowly, every day of their final years. Then look at the windows, where new art now hangs. As you walk back down the tree-lined avenue, notice how the city noise returns, step by step.