Dublin City Hall began life as the Royal Exchange, built between 1769 and 1779 to a design by Thomas Cooley, who beat sixty other entrants, including the more celebrated James Gandon. The building introduced the neoclassical style to Irish public architecture; its domed rotunda, ringed by twelve Corinthian columns, remains one of the finest interiors in the city.

In 1814, the front balustrade collapsed under a crowd watching a public flogging, killing several people. By 1852, it had been repurposed as a civic headquarters, its coffee room quietly becoming the council chamber. During the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish Citizen Army seized the building; the first casualty of the rebellion fell at the gate.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use City Hall to trace Dublin's long contest over who governs the city, from British merchant commerce to Irish civic life, with O'Connell's marble statue in the rotunda as the pivot point.