Guinness Storehouse

Ireland's most visited paid attraction is unabashedly big and polished, but it is also the way inside the St. James's Gate site where Arthur Guinness signed his 9,000-year lease in 1759 — the original lease sits under glass in the Storehouse floor. Every ticket ends at the rooftop Gravity Bar with a pint of Guinness (or Guinness 0.0, or a soft drink) and a 360-degree view over Dublin that no pub can match. Book a timed slot online — mornings are noticeably calmer — and treat the pint upstairs as the properly poured benchmark before you go compare it across the city's pubs.