St Michan's Church

Built in 1685, on the site of - by some 600 years -  the oldest church on Dublin's North Side, this Church of Ireland parish houses what must be the city's most ghoulish attraction. Due to an unusual combination of magnesium salts in limestone, the crypts beneath the church are without any moisture, resulting in the perfect preservation of those buried within. Four damaged coffins reveal their inhabitants, in all-too-human form, and in the dungeon-like setting it is quite a spine-tingling sight. The adjacent crypt contains the ornate coffins of The Earl of Leitrim's family as well as artefacts (and more coffins) from the 1798 Rising. Luckily, the intact coffins cannot be prised open, otherwise it truly would be a house of horrors. Curiously, some families still own "plots" within the crypts, so more could be added, although this rarely happens anymore.