Christ Church Cathedral

You've already heard the official story of Christ Church. Now for the other one: the strange things it keeps inside. Beneath your feet is the largest medieval cathedral crypt in Britain or Ireland, about 63 metres long, built in 1172 and 1173.

1The cat and the rat

The crypt displays the mummified bodies of a cat and a rat. According to the cathedral, they got trapped in an organ pipe in the 19th century: the cat was chasing the rat and neither could get out. James Joyce remembered them in Finnegans Wake, with a line about a cat stuck to a mouse in a tube of the Christ Church organ.

2Strongbow's tomb

In the nave lies the tomb of Strongbow, the Norman warlord who landed in Ireland in 1170. The original was smashed when the roof collapsed in 1562, and the present one is a contemporary effigy brought from elsewhere. Beside it is a small half-length figure. Legend says it is Strongbow's son, cut in two by his father for cowardice. It is far more likely to be a fragment of another tomb.

For centuries, contracts were signed and debts paid at this tomb. That part is documented.

3A stolen heart

On 3 March 2012, someone stole the heart of St Laurence O'Toole, the 12th-century Archbishop of Dublin, from the cathedral. The Gardaí recovered it in the Phoenix Park in April 2018.

4What to look for

• The north wall of the nave, leaning since 1562.
• The covered bridge, which leads across to Dublinia.
• The ruins of the chapter house, by the south railings.