Temple Bar (Irish: Barra an Teampaill)[1] is an area on the south bank of the River Liffey in central Dublin, Ireland.

The first mention of Temple Bar as the name of this street is in Bernard de Gomme's Map of Dublin from 1673, which shows the reclaimed land and new buildings.

After Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601, Temple "retired into private life", but he was then solicited to become provost of Trinity College, serving from 1609 until his death in 1627 at age 72.

William Temple's son John became the Master of the Rolls in Ireland (a senior judicial position) and was the author of a famous pamphlet excoriating the native Irish population for an uprising in 1641.

However, a secondary and equally plausible reason for using the name Temple Bar in Dublin would be a reference to one of the area's most prominent families, in a sort of pun or play on words.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the state-owned transport company Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) proposed to buy up and demolish property in the area and build a bus terminus in its place.

[11] Protests by An Taisce, residents and traders led to the cancellation of the bus station project, and then Taoiseach Charles Haughey was responsible for securing funding,[12] and, in 1991, the government set up a not-for-profit company called Temple Bar Properties, managed by Laura Magahy, to oversee the regeneration of the area as Dublin's cultural quarter.

[13][14] In 1999, stag parties and hen nights were supposedly banned (or discouraged) from Temple Bar, mainly due to drunken, loutish behaviour; this seems to have lapsed.

Meetinghouse Square, which takes its name from the nearby Quaker Meeting House, is used for outdoor film screenings in the summer months.