St. Michan's Church — the vaults

OVERVIEW

St. Michan's is a Church of Ireland church on Church Street in Dublin. The first Christian chapel on the site dated from 1095 and served as a Catholic church until the Reformation; the present building dates from 1686. It holds an organ whose ornate case was built between 1723 and 1725 by Jean-Baptiste Cuvilliés, with a twentieth-century instrument inside it.

HISTORY

The vaults beneath contain mummified remains. The walls are limestone, which has kept the air in the crypt very dry, and bodies laid there did not decay. Those shown to visitors included a body reckoned four hundred years old and identified as a nun, a man of six and a half feet popularly called 'the Crusader' and said to be eight hundred years old, a body with its feet and right hand severed, and the Sheares brothers, Henry and John, executed for their part in the 1798 rebellion. Successive Earls of Leitrim are also interred here. Bram Stoker is said to have visited the crypt as a boy.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The vaults have been shown to the public for well over two centuries and are one of the strangest things in Dublin — preserved bodies, open coffins, and a long tradition of visitors shaking the Crusader's hand. The preservation itself is explained: limestone and dry air, not anything stranger. Two recent crimes are part of the record now. In 2019 a man broke into the crypt and stole the heads of two mummies including the Crusader's; they were recovered. On 11 June 2024 an intruder deliberately set a fire in the crypt, and the fire together with the water used to fight it destroyed or damaged beyond repair five of the mummified remains, the Crusader among them. Cristian Topiter was sentenced to six years in February 2025.

VISITING

The church is a working parish church. The crypt tours have not run since the 2024 fire — check with the parish before travelling. Church Street, Dublin 7.