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Bloomsday is the celebration of Ireland's literary icon James Joyce and his most famous novel Ulysses, through street theatre, costume and public readings.
Each year on the 16th June the streets of Dublin are transported back to 1904, to a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, the central character in James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses; the novel that immortalised the character of Dublin during the late 19th Century in all its gritty reality.
Bloomsday has become something of a tradition for Joyce devotees who follow the epic journey of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, in full costume, through the streets and bars of Dublin, from the Freeman's Journal over O'Connell Bridge to Davy Byrnes for Gorgonzola and burgundy and on to the National Library. Along the way, there are colourful street theatre enactments of scenes from Ulysses as well as readings from the book.
There are James Joyce societies that hold Bloomsday events throughout the world from San Francisco to Tokyo and from Trieste to Paris, but nowhere is Bloomsday as rollicking and energetic as its original setting of Dublin.
Bloomsday celebrated its centenary in 2004 with a five month festival of literature and theatre and the day itself just gets bigger and bigger each year. Bloomsday 16th June is a great time to visit Dublin, whether you've managed to read Ulysses or not!
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