The building that now houses the city's municipal records and a permanent exhibition on Dublin's history stands on ground that was once a medieval parish church, dedicated to St Mary del Dame. The name itself is a curiosity, most likely derived from the nearby Dame's Gate, one of the entrances through the old city walls, giving the church a designation that has quietly survived in the street name long after the building itself vanished.

The earliest documentary record of St Mary del Dame appears in a deed dating to around 1179, making it one of the older parish foundations in the medieval city. By 1219 to 1220 it had been assigned to St Patrick's Cathedral, folding it into the growing ecclesiastical administration that was consolidating control over Dublin's churches in the early Norman period. The church eventually fell from use, and by the sixteenth century the site had been taken over by Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, who constructed a substantial mansion there known as Cork House. That building too was eventually cleared away, and in its place came the Royal Exchange, completed in the eighteenth century and later converted into the City Hall we know today. One physical remnant may survive elsewhere in the city: a tomb associated with the Purcell family, now housed in nearby St Werburgh's Church, is believed to have originated at St Mary del Dame before the site was cleared.

City Hall sits at the top of Dame Street, just opposite the gates of Dublin Castle, and is freely accessible to the public during opening hours. The ground floor exhibition traces the history of the city and is worth a slow circuit, though the medieval parish beneath your feet receives little direct attention there. Visitors interested in the Purcell tomb can find St Werburgh's Church a short walk away on Werburgh Street; it is not always open, so it is worth checking ahead. The layers of occupation compressed into this small patch of the city, church, aristocratic mansion, commercial exchange, civic building, make it a useful place to think about how thoroughly one era can erase another.