An airport beside the zoo? The hidden history of Dublin’s Phoenix Park

It has been a motor-racing circuit, an army training ground and a place for cattle to graze. It has hosted popes, rock bands, monarchs and presidents, and just about every conceivable sport. It has been the scene of murders and mayhem, the site of lavish ambassadors’ parties and a location for poems, books and films.

More than anything else, though, the Phoenix Park is the people’s playground, a verdant sanctuary that has been home to generations of fallow deer for over 350 years..