Guinness Storehouse

What it is

The Guinness Storehouse is the ticketed visitor experience inside the working St. James's Gate brewery, in the Liberties, about a mile west of Dublin's centre. Guinness has brewed on this ground since 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed the lease the company still quotes at nine thousand years, and the brewery around the building is still in production; the operator's own directions page tells arriving visitors to follow the smell of hops.

The attraction is not a guided tour. It is a self-guided route through seven floors of exhibition, ending in the Gravity Bar at the top, and the ticket price includes one drink there — a pint of Guinness, one of the other beers brewed on site, Guinness 0.0, or a soft drink for anyone who does not want alcohol.

People searching for a Guinness Museum end up here, and the operator explains why: a Brewery Museum did once exist, opened in 1966 by Rupert Guinness, 2nd Lord Iveagh, in the old Chemists' Laboratory on Watling Street, and it drew about ten thousand visitors in its lifetime. The Storehouse took over that role and states it has welcomed more than twenty million people since. Expect a designed brand experience rather than a quiet collection of objects.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The route runs upward through seven floors. The lower floors cover ingredients and brewing, with a barley display on the ground floor that uses real grain. Higher up, the advertising archive is the strongest part for most visitors: the toucans, the printed campaigns and the television commercials, drawn from a company archive that holds records back to 1759. The Tasting Room is a short sensory stop built around the flavour of the stout itself.

The fourth floor is where the paid add-ons happen. The Guinness Academy teaches the six-step pour and sends you away with a certificate and the pint you poured. The STOUTie prints a selfie onto the head of a pint. The Connoisseur Experience is a seated tasting for small groups, run three times a day at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm, lasting about an hour and a quarter, limited to sixteen places, in English, over-18s only.

The Gravity Bar sits at the top under glass and steel with a full circle of city views. Eating is spread through the building: Roasthouse for coffee and cakes daily 9.30am to 6pm, Market Street and the 1837 Bar & Brasserie from midday, and Arthur's Bar until 9.30pm. The flagship retail store is on the ground floor.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

The operator recommends allowing at least ninety minutes for the self-guided experience, and the booking page prints the same figure as the average time for a standard ticket. Because nothing is timed once you are inside, that ninety minutes is a floor rather than a fixed length — you set the pace through the exhibition floors.

This guide budgets two hours for planning purposes. The extra half hour is not exhibition time; it is the queue for the lift to the Gravity Bar, the wait at the bar itself once you are up there, and the drink you have paid for and will want to sit with. On a busy weekend afternoon that margin gets used.

Add-ons stack on top. The operator says to add roughly thirty minutes each for the Guinness Academy and the STOUTie, and about an hour and fifteen minutes for the Connoisseur Experience. A ticket with both fourth-floor add-ons is realistically a three-hour visit.

Arrival is stricter than the visit. Tickets carry a fifteen-minute entry slot and the operator asks visitors to arrive five minutes before it; missing the slot means being deferred to the next available one, with the difference payable if that one is a premium slot.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Season and crowds

The operator's own pages do not agree on the hours, so both are recorded here. The FAQ page and the visit page both state Monday to Sunday, 9.30am to 7.30pm, with the building open until 10pm. The separate directions page gives what it calls indicative hours instead: Monday to Friday 10am to 7pm with last admission at 5pm, Saturday 9.30am to 8pm with last admission at 6pm, and Sunday 9.30am to 7pm with last admission at 5pm, adding that in December and January the Saturday last admission moves to 5pm. Every one of those pages says the hours are subject to change, so check the time slots on the booking page for the actual date.

No closing day is published on any of them, and no midday break. This guide records the daily 9.30am to 7.30pm span, which is what two of the three pages say.

For quiet, the accessibility guide is the most useful page on the site: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 10am and noon are described as generally less busy, with easier access to the lifts. Weekend afternoons are called out as the busiest and least suitable for anyone sensitive to noise. Midweek slots also carry the cheaper saver rate.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Two operator pages quote different starting prices and neither is treated here as the correction of the other. The booking page lists the standard Guinness Storehouse Experience from €24 per person; the FAQ page says adult tickets generally start from €26. Both state that the price moves with the date, the time of day and the age of the visitor, so the number you actually pay comes from the booking calendar. Midweek saver slots at €22 appear in the booking system.

Children aged 5 to 17 pay €10, under-4s are free, and a family ticket for two adults and two children starts from €62. Buying at the admissions hall costs €2 more than online, availability is not guaranteed, and the door takes card only.

Add-ons are priced from the same page: the Guinness Academy from €36 all in, or €14 on top of a tour ticket; the STOUTie from €32, or €10 on top. Guided and combination tickets run higher — €41 with an Open Gate Brewery paddle, €48 for the fully guided Home of Guinness Experience, €95 for the Connoisseur Experience, €350 for the Brewery Experience.

Tickets are non-refundable but can be moved up to 24 hours before arrival at no charge. Groups of fifteen or more can ask for 10% off the standard adult rate by email.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

No car is needed, and the operator's own directions page assumes most visitors walk. It is about twenty minutes on foot from College Green: west along Dame Street, past Christ Church Cathedral, on down Thomas Street, then left into Crane Street and round by Bellevue onto Market Street, where the entrance is.

By tram, take the Luas Red Line from the city centre towards Tallaght and get off at James's; the operator puts the remaining walk at seven minutes. By bus, the number 73 from O'Connell Street or Dame Street towards Walkinstown takes about ten minutes and drops you on James's Street. From Heuston station it is a fifteen-minute walk, twelve minutes by tram or ten by taxi; from Connolly, forty minutes on foot, twenty-five by tram or thirty by taxi. Dublin's hop-on hop-off services stop at the entrance. Fares on trams, trains and buses can be paid by cash, card or Leap Card; taxis take cash or card but not Leap.

Driving is possible: there is a limited free car park on Crane Street, first come first served, with accessible spaces near the entrance. Market Street parking is reserved for coaches, and there is a drop-off area in front of the main entrance. Cyclists get a secure bike area in the Crane Street car park and a Dublin Bikes station at Market Street South.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The barley display on the ground floor uses real grain, which the operator warns can be uncomfortable for anyone with a gluten intolerance or sensitivity; masks are kept at the information desk on the lower ground floor. Flickering and flashing lights are used throughout the building, though the operator states there is no strobe lighting.

Access has hard limits worth knowing before booking. Only four wheelchair users can be in the Gravity Bar at any one time, two in each bar space, and large groups of wheelchair users may be asked to split up, which can mean waiting. There is no disability concession on the ticket price, but one care assistant per visitor gets in free for the self-guided tour — book your own ticket first, then email the booking reference to be issued the carer ticket.

Under-18s are welcome but must be accompanied by an adult, cannot drink, and can watch but not take part in the Academy or the STOUTie. Neither the Gravity Bar nor the ground-floor shop can be visited without a tour ticket. Bags may be screened on the way in. Luggage can be left in the storage facility, but coats and jackets cannot. The horse-and-carriage operators waiting outside are not connected to the Storehouse.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Photography is allowed and openly encouraged, as long as it is safe to do so; only commercial photography and filming need permission, which the operator asks for at least seven days in advance by email. In practice this is a building people photograph constantly, so the question is when rather than whether.

The Gravity Bar is the shot everyone comes for and the hardest one to take well. It is a glass drum, so every window throws reflections of the room behind you back into the frame — get the lens close to the glass, kill the flash, and shoot with the pint on the sill rather than holding it up. The quiet window the operator names for accessibility, Tuesday to Thursday between 10am and noon, is also the one time the glass is not three deep in people.

Outside, the famous gates on Crane Street are the recognisable exterior frame and cost nothing to stand in front of; the operator points cyclists at them for exactly that reason.

The advertising floors reward closer looking than wide shots do: the printed toucan campaigns hold up as detail crops far better than as a photograph of a whole wall. And if the point of the trip is the picture, the STOUTie add-on prints your face onto the head of the pint.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

• 1 hr 30 min

  10 min walk

  National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks

  • Must see
  • Museum
• 45 min

  10 min walk

  Teeling Distillery

  • Must see
  • Historic monument
• 45 min

  11 min walk

  Mill Street House

  • Notable
  • Historic monument

External links

• View on Wikidata