There’s no question, Dublin is a fantastic city for shopping. Independent shops and boutiques line up alongside their chain store rivals, and you can often find excellent craftsmanship in the form of hand-woven wool blankets and clothes, high-quality crafts and antiques, and chic fashions from the seemingly limitless line of Dublin designers.

The hub of mainstream shopping south of the Liffey is indisputably Grafton Street, with its mix of big chains, chi-chi department stores, and little shops. It’s also a popular site for street performers, where you’re almost guaranteed an impromptu show, rain or shine. Grafton Street is crowned by the city’s most fashionable department store, Brown Thomas (known as BT), and the jeweler Weir & Sons, but much better shopping is on the smaller streets radiating out from Grafton, such as Duke, Dawson, Nassau, and Wicklow streets, where you’ll find shops that specialize in books, handicrafts, jewelry, gifts, and clothing. For clothes, look out for tiny Cow’s Lane, off Lord Edward Street—it’s popular with those in the know for its excellent clothing boutiques selling the works of local designers. Also in Grafton’s penumbra are William Street South, Castle Market, and Drury Street, all of which have smart boutiques and irresistible tiny shops. On William Street South, check out the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, a small, elegant shopping center in a grand Georgian town house. Not far away, the George’s Street Arcade is a marvelous clutter of bohemian jewelry, used books, vintage clothes, and other things appealing to the alternative crowd (they even have a resident fortune teller).

Dublin has several clusters of shops in multistory malls or ground-level arcades, ideal for indoor shopping on rainy days. On the Northside, these include the ILAC Centre, off Henry Street, and the Jervis Shopping Centre, at 125 Abbey Street. On the south side, there’s the small Royal Hibernian Way, 49–50 Dawson Street; the gleaming wrought-iron-and-glass St. Stephen’s Green Centre at the top of Grafton Street; and the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, 59 William Street South. In the southern suburbs, about 8km (5 miles) south of the city center, the large Dundrum Town Centre on Sandyford Road has several major fashion outlets.