"It’ll take two minutes,” the barmaid says. “They’ll be the longest two minutes of your life, but the wait will be worth it.” She’s pouring my pint of Guinness, thick and dark, in two stages, finishing with a practised swirl of the wrist that draws a shamrock in the creamy foam. In the town that James Joyce claimed impossible to cross without passing a pub, the Gravity Bar at the top of the Guinness Storehouse museum, Dublin, is both a fitting place to begin a visit, and a great viewpoint for getting your bearings — as long as you don’t stay long enough to lose them again.

Laid out below is a 360-degree jumble of wide thoroughfares, narrow cobbled lanes, leafy parks, church spires and, cutting across the city in a gentle curve, the River Liffey, spanned by numerous bridges. The most picturesque is the Halfpenny Bridge, humped, wrought iron and pedestrian, leading straight into the bustling lanes of Temple Bar, where high-end boutiques and farmers’ markets, friendly pubs and classy restaurants offer something for everybody, against a buskers’ soundtrack of everything from hard rock to diddley-dee Irish music. In complete contrast, through an archway is the instant peace and scholarly atmosphere of Trinity College, set amongst trees and green lawns. Here, in a darkened room, is the Book of Kells, perhaps Ireland’s greatest treasure: created around 800AD, it’s a fabulously ornate illuminated copy of the Gospel, using gold, lapis lazuli, arsenic and lead to make its still-bright colours; and the detail and labour that those long-ago monks put into their work make my head spin — or perhaps that’s still the Guinness.

Fresh air and excitement clear my head across the river at Croke Park Stadium, where I join an enthusiastic crowd of 82,000 to watch the All-Ireland Football Final between Cork and Kerry. It’s a thrilling mix of soccer, rugby, volleyball and basketball, dizzyingly fast and thoroughly entertaining, and the crowd roars and groans in full voice before pouring out afterwards in a good-humoured mix of winners and losers. Underneath the stadium is an absorbing museum that knits together the sports of gaelic football and hurling with Ireland’s turbulent history, some of it happening right here: opposite my seat was the stand Hill 16, constructed from the rubble of buildings destroyed by the British after the Easter Rising of 1916.

It’s sobering stuff — so to lighten the mood I take the Literary Pub Crawl with Colm and Eamer, who guide us around a selection of cosy drinking spots each linked with some of Ireland’s many great writers. I’m delighted to sip cider while listening to a lively summary of Ulysses that finally lifts from my shoulders the burden of one day having to finish reading the book I started back in 1975. We trail around the city lanes as our guides act out scenes from Beckett, Joyce, Wilde and Swift, but it’s not all high-brow: Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, was a local man, and Oliver Goldsmith gave us ‘Jack and Jill’ and ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’. I lose track of how many pubs we enter, all unique, all welcoming, as Colm sifts through hundreds of years of history and literature to give us the gold, before leaving us to totter over the shiny cobbles to our beds.

Next morning I wander past elegant Georgian buildings to Merrion Square Park, a soothing expanse of green where I find Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock near the house where he lived, looking quizzical. I’m feeling puzzled myself after yesterday’s taster: Dublin is so full of history, and I want to get it straight in my head. Pat Liddy’s the man for the job, on his famous walking tour of Dublin’s heritage. He’s relaxed, knowledgeable and entertaining, and as we wander around the street, in and out of buildings, he tells the city’s story from Viking days. He’s full of fascinating snippets: at St Patrick’s Cathedral, he explains that the saying ‘chancing your arm’ came from the custom of putting your arm through a hole in the sanctuary door to make peace with your enemy. If he shook your hand, well and good; if he sliced it off, well…

We see sparkling chandeliers and arched ceilings, meet the liveried doorman of the Brown Thomas department store, pass by locations from Ulysses and the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington, and go through unexceptional glass swing doors to find ourselves in a lovely church with, even more surprising, a shrine to St Valentine containing the actual saint’s remains. A thick book on the altar contains the handwritten pleas of the lovelorn but also, touchingly, the message “Thank you St Valentine for what I have — please help me to keep it all my life”.

We walk along Ship Street Little behind the painted walls of Dublin Castle and pop into a museum of the printed word where, amongst other treasures, we gaze at the oldest section of the New Testament on papyrus, dating from the second century; then, outside again, pass another side of ancient life, where castle guards left deep grooves in the stonework from sharpening their bayonets.

It’s been a long walk, and we rest and refuel in Fallon & Byrne’s lively restaurant, where crab, rabbit, chocolate, hazelnuts and a very pretty red-haired waitress with a quick wit make us feel civilised again. Food, drink, history and fun: that’s Dublin for you.