Capital writing draws visitors

LITERARY DUBLIN:DUBLIN HAS BEEN ranked fourth in a list of the world's best literary-holiday destinations by the travel website TripAdvisor, beaten for bookish associations only by London, Stratford-upon-Avon and Edinburgh.

Compiled by the site's editors using traveller ratings from its reviews and forum postings, the poll rated the city of Joyce, Wilde and Beckett (until each of them fled) above places such as Paris, New York and Rome.

The list has a distinct anglophone bent: only three non- English-speaking cities - St Petersburg, Paris and Rome - made the top 10.

Colm Quilligan of Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, which has been running for 20 years, said the survey showed the success of harnessing the worldwide recognition of Joyce and other authors to market the capital as a literary destination. Those who take the tour are typically well-read and casually interested in Irish literature, he said.

Despite the incessant rain, numbers have kept steady this summer. "Our business has come back very strong in June, July and August. The option is to stay in the hotel and watch Sky News. I know which I'd go for."

London came first in the TripAdvisor list, followed by Shakespeare's Stratford-upon Avon. Edinburgh, where characters from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to JK Rowling's Harry Potter have their origins, was rated third.

The top 10 was completed by New York, Concord in Massachusetts, Paris, San Francisco, Rome and St Petersburg.