Ivy Exchange, Parnell Street, Dublin
Ireland's largest independent bookshop — huge selection, new and second-hand. A Dublin institution.
Best for Ireland's largest independent bookshop — new and second-hand books
Books of Ireland
14 stores · curated ORBIS register
Visit official site ↗Dublin / Ireland / Online
As the final stop on the visitor route through EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, this shop sells Irish-made jewelry, homeware, books, and keepsakes sourced from small Irish designers and makers. It ships worldwide from its online store, with free gift wrapping and free delivery on larger orders within Ireland.
Best for Irish-gifts, jewelry, books, homeware
Visit official site ↗Hodges Figgis
Heritage House56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin
Hodges Figgis sells books from its Dawson Street premises in Dublin, with a dedicated Irish range. That range covers Irish fiction and history alongside poetry, travel writing and Irish-language books. The business traces its beginnings to 1768 on Skinner's Row, rather than to the current building.
Best for Irish writing and general books in Dublin
Visit official site ↗Dublin / Ireland
The IFI Film Shop sits inside the Irish Film Institute, the charity that runs Ireland's national film archive on Eustace Street. It stocks Irish and international film books, archive box sets, and posters, with IFI members getting 10% off.
Best for Irish and international cinema books, archive box sets and gifts
The IFI Film Shop operates inside the Irish Film Institute at 6 Eustace Street in Temple Bar, the retail arm of what the IFI describes as "Ireland's national cultural institution for film." The Institute is a registered charity (No. 20021429) built around five stated pillars — Exhibit, Preserve, Educate, Innovate, and People — and its Preserve function, run through the IFI Irish Film Archive, gives the shop's stock a distinct backbone: alongside new releases, it carries archive box sets and critical writing tied directly to the Institute's own preservation work.
That connection to the Archive shows up on the shelves — Irish television and film box sets like Love/Hate sit next to critical writing from figures such as Mark Cousins and David Thomson, and the shop favors Irish and international arthouse cinema over mainstream new-release stock. Annual IFI membership, sold at the shop, carries a 10% discount on further purchases, tying retail to the Institute's broader mission of building sustained audiences for film rather than one-off sales. The shop, cinema, and café bar share the same Eustace Street building, making the store as much a coda to a cinema visit as a standalone destination.
Visit official site ↗Dublin / Ireland
The Kilmainham Gaol Book and Gift Shop occupies the ground floor of the Courthouse Visitor Centre and can be visited without a museum ticket, and it also sells online at kilmainhamgaolbooks.ie. It stocks books tied to the site's history as a 19th- and 20th-century Irish prison alongside general gift items.
Best for Books, gifts, irish-history
Visit official site ↗City Centre
Independent secondhand bookshop and record store at 15A Wicklow Street in central Dublin, Ireland, buying, selling and trading used books alongside vinyl records and CDs.
Best for Used books and vinyl below Wicklow Street
The Secret Book and Record Store is an independent shop at 15A Wicklow Street in central Dublin, dealing in secondhand and discounted books alongside vinyl records and CDs. It operates on a buy-sell-exchange model typical of Dublin's used-book trade and has built a following among locals and visitors browsing its stock for out-of-print titles and rare records.
Visit Facebook ↗Ormond Quay
The Winding Stair became a Dublin landmark as a bookshop in the 1970s, named after a Yeats poem and set beside the Ha'penny Bridge on Lower Ormond Quay. It reopened in 2006 with a restaurant upstairs, keeping the ground-floor bookshop and its old shelves intact.
Best for Ground-floor bookshop and riverside dining
Visit official site ↗County Galway, Spiddal
Spailpín has hand screen-printed Irish-language t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts from its Spiddal Craft Village workshop in Connemara since 1979, alongside children's and baby clothing, books, stationery, art prints and instruments like tin whistles and bodhráns. It also offers DTF and sublimation printing for short runs.
Best for Irish language t-shirts and gifts
Visit official site ↗Middle Street, Latin Quarter
Charlie Byrne's fills the Cornstore on Middle Street with more than 100,000 new, secondhand, bargain and antiquarian titles, with deep sections in Irish literature and history. Founded in 1989, it has grown into a mainstay of Galway's reading life.
Best for Irish and secondhand books
Visit official site ↗Green Street, Dingle
Dingle's independent bookshop on Green Street carries new titles with a strong shelf of Irish-interest, Kerry and Irish-language writing. It hosts readings and orders in requests for a peninsula readership.
Best for Irish-interest books
Visit official site ↗Liosbán, Tuam Road
Founded by Des and Maureen Kenny in 1940, this Galway bookseller handles new, secondhand and rare books alongside a gallery of contemporary Irish art and a bindery running since 1974. It moved from its long-time city-centre premises to a larger space on the Tuam Road.
Best for Rare and Irish-interest books
Visit official site ↗O'Mahony's Booksellers
Heritage House120 O'Connell Street, Limerick
O'Mahony's Booksellers is a family bookselling business founded by J. P. O'Mahony on Limerick's O'Connell Street in 1902. Its Limerick shop carries children's books alongside general reading and specialist non-fiction, with an online store extending the business beyond the city. The shop has also hosted author visits and book launches, connecting its retail shelves with local literary events.
Best for Independent book browsing and specialist non-fiction in Limerick
O'Mahony's Booksellers began in Limerick in 1902, when J. P. O'Mahony opened a shop after working in the haberdashery department of Cannock's. The family history estimates that the first shop had three staff and occupied about 550 square feet. Frank O'Mahony later joined the company around 1918, carrying the business into a second generation. The official account describes trading through the First World War and the changes that followed, giving the present bookseller more than a century of documented family continuity. That history supports a catalogue with unusual depth. General books sit beside Irish fiction, Irish history and books as Gaeilge. School and academic sections add law and medicine alongside nursing and education. Agriculture and veterinary subjects form another specialist group. Children's books are divided by reading stage and age. Maps and stationery, together with professional titles widen the practical range. Author visits and signing photographs form part of the shop's own archive. O'Mahony's identity is therefore grounded in both place and duration: a Limerick business founded by a named bookseller, expanded through family succession and sustained by a catalogue that serves general readers and students alongside specialist professions.
Visit official site ↗Temple Bar
Bob Johnston opened The Gutter Bookshop on Cow's Lane in Temple Bar in 2009, its name taken from Oscar Wilde's line about looking at the stars from the gutter. A second branch followed in Dalkey in 2013, both known for hand-selling fiction and children's books.
Best for Independent-bookshop browsing and children's titles
Visit official site ↗Cork city centre
A Cork bookshop stocking new, bargain and second-hand titles across fiction, children's books, comics and graphic novels, with an art and craft floor of wool, fabric and fine-art materials. It is independently run, with a store locator and a Cork phone line on its site.
Best for Books and craft supplies
Visit official site ↗Curated ORBIS register · official links shown where recorded