Book of Kells Tickets: The Long Room Shelves Are Empty

If you are booking Trinity College for the photograph — the tunnel of dark oak shelves stacked to the ceiling — read this first. About 200,000 books have been removed from the Long Room. Roughly 20,000 remain, in the first four bays only. The rest of the shelving stands empty.

What is actually there now

The Long Room is open. Trinity has filled the emptied space with new sculptures of women including Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin, and with Gaia, Luke Jerram’s illuminated Earth. It is a striking room. It is not the room in the postcards, and every photograph you have seen predates the decant.

The Book of Kells itself is unaffected and on display as normal. The Old Library stays open to visitors until the end of 2027, when construction begins and the manuscript moves to the Printing House. No reopening date is published.

Two tickets, and the cheaper one is easy to miss

• Book of Kells Experience — from €26. Old Library, Long Room and the digital exhibitions in the Red Pavilion. About 90 minutes.
• Book of Kells & Old Library — from €19. Manuscript and Long Room only, no Red Pavilion. Sold in smaller daily allocations and often shows as sold out.

Both are sold concurrently — the Experience did not replace the older ticket. Prices are quoted “from”, so they move with demand. Timed entry is required and online booking is strongly recommended; Trinity does not publish a walk-up policy, and daily allocations do run out.

The Dublin Pass does not cover Trinity. Both the Old Library and the Pavilion are wheelchair accessible, and there is a dedicated low-sensory ticket from €21.50.

Source: visittrinity.ie, checked 26 August 2026.

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