Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture

In the corner of Merrion Square, opposite the house at No. 1 where he grew up, Oscar Wilde reclines on a thirty-five-ton boulder of Wicklow quartz and looks back at Dublin with two faces: walk around the statue and the smirk on one side of his mouth becomes grief on the other. Danny Osborne's 1997 sculpture is built from stone chosen like a wardrobe — a jacket of Canadian jade with a pink thulite collar, trousers of Norwegian granite, polished charnockite shoes. Two small pillars face him, carved with Wilde quotations chosen by Irish writers and topped by bronze figures; his grandson Merlin Holland unveiled the ensemble. Dubliners, inevitably, have furnished the statue with irreverent rhyming nicknames. Visiting: Merrion Square park is free and open daylight hours, ten minutes' walk from Trinity College. Ireland's arc makes the site land differently than it once did — the country that exiled Wilde's memory decriminalised in 1993 and voted for marriage equality by referendum in 2015, celebrations spilling through these same streets.