Bittles Bar

Bittles Bar occupies the ground floor of a flat-iron shaped red-brick warehouse at 70 Upper Church Lane, built in 1868 for a flour merchant and known as the Shakespeare until John Bittles took the bar over and renamed it in 1990. The narrow, wedge-shaped lounge is hung with portraits of Irish literary and sporting figures, including Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, George Best and Alex Higgins, gathered over Bittles's decades behind the counter. The pub keeps a wide whiskey selection alongside cask and craft beer taps, and runs no food menu, functioning purely as a drinking room. It sits just off Victoria Square, close to the edge of the Cathedral Quarter, and has never expanded beyond this single building. Ownership has remained with the Bittles family since 1990, making it one of the city centre's longer-standing independent freehouses.