To return to Trinity as a visitor after more than 30 years is to feel an immediate sense of recognition. But John Henry Foley's statue of the statesman Henry Grattan still stands on its island above the swirl of traffic, holding out its hand toward the college as if to proclaim that here it still is. The entrance is flanked by statues, also by Foley, of two of Trinity's most illustrious graduates, the poet Oliver Goldsmith and the statesman Edmund Burke. Goldsmith in his breeches and buckled shoes stands, left foot forward, in insouciant ease, reading from a book held in his left palm. Burke, hand on hip, has a more resolutely aggressive air.
Trinity is cruciform in shape, the cross formed by six squares.
The visitor passes through Front Square to this immense area. To the north is Botany Bay, a residential square named for the Australian penal colony, so it is rumored, because of the unruliness of its former student inhabitants. To the south lies Fellows Square containing the Arts and Social Science Building, opened in 1978 when the cruciform design was completed. To the east is New Square, which contains the museum, arguably the most beautiful building in Trinity. But it is the merging of Parliament and Library Squares with the great campanile, with its two ancient and sonorous bells, rising from the center that is perhaps Trinity's most successful architectural innovation.