{"id":1112,"date":"2017-07-22T21:11:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womenrep.org\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2023-04-13T21:11:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T11:11:38","slug":"visiting-the-president-of-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"Visiting the President of Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This day found WfaAR at Aras an Uachtarain, known locally as &#8220;<em>the Aras&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>&#8211; the residence of the President of Ireland.\u00a0The house and\u00a0the formal gardens with trees planted by Queen Victoria and other\u00a0British royal visitors,\u00a0are open to the public every Saturday for six guided tours on a first come first serve basis (and they are very popular).\u00a0The tours cover the formal state and reception rooms on the ground floor as well as an unrestricted\u00a0gawk into the President&#8217;s working\u00a0study. Formerly the residence of the Viceroy, the representative of the British monarch in Ireland,\u00a0and later the Governor-General, the role of the\u00a0grand house\u00a0changed\u00a0after the passing of the 1937 constitution which established Ireland as a republic. Intended for demolition, it was the\u00a0temporary residence for\u00a0the first President, Douglas Hyde,\u00a0before being restored and extended as the permanent presidential residence. It was opened to the public in 1998. Most remarkable are the brightly coloured and almost casual portraits of the two female Presidents thus far, Mary Robinson 1990-1997\u00a0and Mary McAleese 1997-2011. This contrasts with our vice-regal residence at Yarralumla that\u00a0is open to the public only\u00a0on\u00a0certain (few)\u00a0days of the year and only associated with fund-raising or specific cultural events. WfaAR also\u00a0noticed how crowded the galleries of Irish art were at the National Gallery of Ireland with keen attention being paid to works depicting the history of the Irish people. And the expression of sovereignty through the use of Gaelic as the first language on every sign and in\u00a0every announcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This day found WfaAR at Aras an Uachtarain, known locally as &#8220;the Aras&#8221;\u00a0&#8211; the residence of the President of Ireland.\u00a0The house and\u00a0the formal gardens with trees planted by Queen Victoria and other\u00a0British royal visitors,\u00a0are open to the public every Saturday&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15","wpcat-15-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1113,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}