Exhibitions
The Book of Kells "Turning Darkness into Light" Exhibition, on view in the Colonnades of the Old Library, places the 9th-century manuscript in its historical perspective and allows the visitor to acquire a greater appreciation of the work than is usually possible. Related manuscripts are also on show and may include the Book of Armagh, the Book of Durrow, the Book of Mulling and the Book of Dimma. For information specific to a visit to see the Book of Kells, please see the new Book of Kells Exhibition website. Admission to the Book of Kells include entrance to all current physical exhibitions in the Old Library building.
Currently on display in the Long Room

The Elsbeth and Bettina Bollmann Collection of fore-edge paintings and bindings
This collection of 52 books was donated to the Library in 2022 by Bettina Bollmann, who had joined her mother Elsbeth over several decades in assembling the collection.
Online Exhibitions
- Matthew Paris's 13th-Century 'Book of St Albans': A Masterpiece of Medieval Art
- 'If a female had once passed the gate...': Trinity Women Graduates Centenary Exhibition 1922-2022
- Derek Mahon: Piecing together the Poet
- "... but then somebody ate a bat and the whole world went CRAZY": children's responses to lockdown 2020
- Rockaby, baby: Building on Trinity's collection of Beckett literary archives
- The Greatest of All Schools of Oratory
- On Speaking Terms
- The Poetics of Print
- FOREVER BEGIN: Brendan Kennelly, poet
- Drawing Your Attention: Four Centuries of Political Caricature
- Paint and Click
- Ireland & the English Lake Poets
- A Splendid Tradition - the Gwynn family papers
- The Book of Durrow
- What is Life?
- Managing Risks: what are the agents of deterioration?
- Photographs in the Michael Davitt Collection
- Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College Dublin
- George Berkeley’s Manuscript Introduction
- Story Spinners
- Violence Ridicule and Silence
- Illuminating the Middle Ages
- Frank Stephens - A Life in Photographs
- Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900: From Decadence to Despair
- Tom Murphy: A Life in the Theatre
- Orchids & Orangeries: Aspects of private gardens in the late 17th-century Dutch Republic
- The Early Irish Manuscripts Project
- Discovering the Dean: Jonathan Swift, Trinity College and Dublin City
- Brian Boydell: A Centenary Display
- Power and Belief: The Reformation at 500
- The Journey of The Playboy
- Writing Art in Ireland
- Fit as Fiddles and as Hard as Nails: Irish Soldiers' Voices from the Great War
- Discover the Birth of Independence
- The Clarke Stained Glass Studios
- The Ruins of Dublin, 1916: A Photographic Record by Thomas Johnson Westropp
- Changed Utterly: Ireland and the Easter Rising
- The Great War Revisited
- Upon the Wild Waves: A Journey through Myth in Children’s Books
- Emperor of the Irish: Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf, 1014
- In Tune: A Millennium of Music in Trinity College Library
- Preservation and Conservation: What’s That?
- Drawn to the Page: Irish Artists and Illustration 1830 - 1930
- A Great Many Choice Books: 300 years of the Old Library
- Troubled Magnificence: France under Louis XIV
- Images from the Collen Archive
- What Price the Children: the Work of Dorothy Price among the Dublin Poor
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
- The Book of Kings: Middle-Eastern Manuscripts in the Library