The residence was rented by the Irish Free State to the Vatican for use as the Apostolic Nunciature (papal embassy).
The Lodge was vacated by the Papal Nuncio in the mid 1970s, when he moved to a new purpose-built nunciature on the Navan Road in Dublin.
But after some years' delay it was decided that the Lodge (in a politically unappealing Georgian style) was in too poor a state of repair due to dry rot to be converted and so was demolished.
Tours of Áras an Uachtaráin (residence of the President of Ireland) begin from the centre every Saturday.
While it served as the Apostolic Nunciature, one of its most famous residents was Giovanni Montini, later Pope Paul VI, who worked as a young diplomat there.