Founded in 1592, Trinity College Dublin is one of the seven ancient universities of Britain and Ireland. It is Ireland's oldest university. It is also the highest ranked university in the country and one of the world’s top 100.
Trinity College’s campus is in Dublin city centre, opposite the former Irish Houses of Parliament. The university has three faculties comprising 25 schools. These offer degree and diploma courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Trinity has approximately 17,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. The university has Past students include the writers Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett, the scientists William Rowan Hamilton and Ernest Walton, the political thinker Edmund Burke, and the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson.
The Library of Trinity College is a legal deposit library for Ireland and the United Kingdom. It contains over 4.5 million printed volumes, in addition to significant quantities of maps, music and manuscripts. One of the most noteworthy of these is the world-famous Book of Kells.
Founded by royal charter, Trinity College helped to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland. Because of this, Trinity was the university of the Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history. Because of this, from 1871 to 1970, the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade its adherents from attending Trinity without permission. From January 1904, the university accepted female students.
Trinity has the following international rankings:
