The castle is known as a seat of British rule in Ireland, a complex of state apartments and medieval towers, but cartographic evidence points to something more considered in its layout, a deliberate shaping of the ground that speaks to the ambitions of those who occupied the site.

Charles Brooking's map of Dublin, published in 1728, records a garden within the castle precinct. Brooking was a surveyor whose detailed plan of the city remains one of the most important documents for understanding early eighteenth-century Dublin, capturing the urban fabric at a moment when the city was expanding rapidly under the influence of the Anglo-Irish establishment. The presence of a garden on his map is significant. Designed landscapes of this period were not incidental; they were expressions of status, order, and political confidence. For the administrators of Dublin Castle, shaping the ground around their residence in a formal manner would have been entirely consistent with how such institutions presented themselves across Britain and Ireland at the time.

The castle itself is open to the public and sits just off Dame Street in the south city, accessible on foot from most central locations. The present-day layout of the grounds has changed considerably since Brooking recorded it, and visitors should not expect to find a surviving formal garden. What remains worthwhile is approaching the site with the 1728 map in mind, looking at the space between the buildings and considering how deliberately arranged the precinct once was. The Chester Beatty Library occupies part of the grounds and is worth visiting in its own right, and the medieval Record Tower, the oldest surviving element of the original castle, gives a sense of the deep time layered into a place that has been continuously occupied, altered, and reimagined since the thirteenth century.