Portobello (Irish: Cuan Aoibhinn, meaning 'beautiful harbour') is an area of Dublin in Ireland, within the southern city centre and bounded to the south by the Grand Canal.

As a fast-expanding suburb during the 19th century, Portobello attracted many upwardly mobile families whose members went on to play important roles in politics, the arts and science.

Towards the end of the century, many Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, settled in the area; this led to Portobello being known as Dublin's "Little Jerusalem".

[5] In 1867, at the time of the Fenian Uprising, security was stepped up, and an innocent young resident of Bloomfield Avenue, walking his dog in the vicinity, was accused of breaking and entry, among other things.

[6] The barracks was the scene of a sensational murder on 27 December 1873, when the body of Gunner Colin Donaldson was found slumped across the bed of Anne Wyndford Marshall, in the apartment she shared with her husband.

It was popular among officers visiting the nearby Portobello Barracks (who would occasionally pop across South Richmond Street to the Grand Canal Tavern for a drink) and claimed it was the nearest hotel to the Royal Dublin Society grounds.

During the summer months, gas and Chinese lamps illuminated the gardens, a band played outdoors, and the public were entertained by acrobats, dancers and "a highly trained troupe of performing dogs".

written entirely from his circus advertisement) announced that the sponsor of the events at the gardens "has the honor to inform the Nobility, Gentry, and the Public that he has entered into an arrangement with Mr. Pablo Fanque for three Grand Equestrian Day fetes, which will take place on the 10th, 12th, and 14th of June in an immense Pavilion which will be erected for the purpose."

Included in this development was a small DMP police station at the corner of Emor Street and South Circular Road, which closed after the Free State came into being.

The first Jews fleeing conditions in Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) arrived in the early 1870s and eventually settled off Lower Clanbrassil Street.

For a long time local (non-Jewish) children earned their pocket money by lighting fires and doing odd jobs (the Shabbat goy) for the Jews on their Sabbath.

[27] The International Tailors, Machinists and Pressers' Trade Union was founded in November 1908 (and registered in April 1909) by Jewish clothing workers hailing from the South Circular Road area.

[28] The Jewish presence in the area declined following the end of World War II, with a number of Jews emigrating to Israel, and the majority leaving for New York.

The many Muslims now living in the area attend the Dublin Mosque (formerly the Donore Presbyterian Church, built 1884) further along the South Circular Road, and there is also a centre in Harrington Street.

It was firstly taken over by the Institute of Education (under owner Raymond Kearns) and then in 2009 by the Dublin Business School (owned by Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company).

In 2011, one of India's largest educational institutions, the Rayat Bahra Group, moved into nearby Harbour House, once a part of Portobello College, and set up the Lamrin Business School.

[32] In 2009, a new national and cultural centre was opened in the Christian Brothers monastery on Synge St. called The Lantern, which aims to be a place of hospitality to promote intercultural and interfaith dialogue.

[34] In May 2011, the new Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, Alan Shatter opened a Cathal Brugha Barracks Visitors centre to the public commemorating those that fought for the Irish War of Independence.

[35] The earliest written accounts we have of residents in the area date from the 18th century—as the city spread southwards houses on the main roads or in select by-roads such as Charlemont Mall were occupied by the better-off citizens.

This trend continued in the first half of the 19th century, but with the development of the smaller streets from around 1860 and finally the artisans' dwellings, a mix of classes ended up in the area.

Having first arrested Reitz himself, the Dublin Metropolitan Police then left his premises unprotected and allowed the mob to proceed unhindered in destroying that shop and robbing its contents.

During the Easter Rising in 1916, the Irish Citizen Army sent a group of men to seize a delaying position at Portobello Bridge, to allow fortifications to be constructed in the city centre.

[60] Also during the Easter Rising, members of the British 11th East Surrey Regiment at Portobello Bridge arrested the pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington on 25 April because his name was 'on a list', as he returned to his home in Rathmines from touring the city pasting up leaflets calling people to a meeting to form groups to stop looting of property by slum-dwellers.

The following morning Bowen-Colthurst – an Anglo-Irish ultra-loyalist who was a scion of Dripsey Castle in Cork, and a cousin of the writer Elizabeth Bowen, ordered his sergeant to organise a firing squad to shoot dead Sheehy-Skeffington and the two pro-British journalists Dickson (a disabled Scotsman) and McIntyre.

[citation needed] Bowen-Colthurst pleaded insanity at a later investigation and was sent to the mental health facility at Holloway (HM Prison), from where he was quietly released 18 months later.

Two of those sought were Sinn Féin members Michael and William Kavanagh who lived at 5 Pleasants St., who had previously been "fingered" by Kells, and it was thought they would seek refuge among friends in the neighbourhood.

[64] In November 1922 Erskine Childers was arrested by Irish Free State troops, and he was transferred from a Wicklow Jail to Portobello Barracks in Dublin where he was brutally tortured.

His execution brought widespread condemnation at home and abroad, it was the result of a draconian emergency act introduced by the Irish Free State government, the death sentence for anyone caught armed without authorization.

The apparently motiveless murders remained a mystery until files released in 2007 pointed to Commandant James Patrick Conroy, who harboured a personal vendetta against Jews, as the main instigator.

[68] In 1966 a group of students from National College of Art and Design stole the head of lord Nelson's Pillar, which had been blown up by Irish nationalists in March 1966.