This is the first volume in a short series that will deal with the planning and development of Dublin from the earliest times to the present day. The focus is on the built environment and from both geographical and historical perspectives aims to unravel and explain the processes that have interacted to produce today's city. It begins with a discussion of Dublin's early development, emphasizing the value of maps in understanding how the city grew. There follows a detailed examination of the city's flowering in the eighteenth century, and their inter-relationships. This leads into a discussion of the problems of the nineteenth century city. This volume concludes with a reconstruction of Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century, looking at how it might have been seen and experienced by the people of the day.