Most visitors to Dublin do Trinity, the Guinness Storehouse, Temple Bar and call it a city. The locals' Dublin is a different city. Six places you should walk to that the guidebooks do not push.

Iveagh Gardens

Right next to the National Concert Hall, behind a pair of unmarked iron gates that you would walk past every day, is the most beautiful small park in central Dublin. There is a sunken lawn, a maze, a rose garden and a waterfall, and even on a sunny Saturday it is a fraction of the size of the crowd in Stephen's Green next door.

Marsh's Library

Marsh's Library is the oldest public library in Ireland, opened in 1707. It has not been redecorated. The original oak shelving and reading cages are still in use, and the collection includes books that Jonathan Swift personally annotated. Five euros gets you in. There are usually three other people in the room.

The Chester Beatty

The Chester Beatty Library, in the gardens of Dublin Castle, holds one of the most important collections of religious manuscripts in the world. Egyptian papyri, illustrated Qurans, illuminated Bibles, the lot. Entry is free. Most visitors never find it because it is set back from the main castle entrance.

The Pepper Canister Church

St Stephen's Church on Mount Street, nicknamed the Pepper Canister, sits at the end of one of the most perfect Georgian terraces in Europe. Walk down Mount Street Lower in the late afternoon when the light is on the doorways. It is one of the best free things you can do in the city.

Stoneybatter

Stoneybatter, just north of the Liffey, was a working-class neighbourhood for two hundred years and is now the kind of district where artists and chefs have moved in. Mulligan Grocer, L Mulligan Grocer, Kavanagh's (also called the Gravediggers, beside Glasnevin Cemetery) and the Cobblestone are all worth a Saturday lunchtime.

The Sweepstakes Stairs

This one is for completists. Behind the Hugh Lane Gallery, on the side facing Parnell Square, there is a small staircase down to a hidden mosaic and a piece of the original Georgian street wall. Almost no one knows it is there. The gallery itself, by the way, has the only complete Francis Bacon studio outside London, reconstructed brick by brick.