Most visitors crossing the threshold of the neoclassical rotunda have little reason to suspect they are standing on ground once occupied by a residence of considerable political weight, yet the evidence, though largely architectural memory at this point, is recorded.

The site was formerly home to a 17th-century townhouse known as 'The Carbrie', the Dublin residence of Richard Boyle, the Great Earl of Cork. Boyle was a figure of extraordinary influence in Jacobean and Caroline Ireland, having arrived in the country in 1588 with little to his name and accumulating, through a combination of shrewd land acquisition and political manoeuvring, one of the largest fortunes in the kingdom. His Dublin townhouse, as recorded by Maurice Craig in his 1969 survey of the city's architecture, occupied the very ground on which City Hall was later constructed. The building that replaced it was originally designed by Thomas Cooley and completed in 1779 as the Royal Exchange, a commercial meeting place for Dublin's merchant community, before being taken over by Dublin Corporation in the 19th century and converted to civic use.

City Hall sits at the top of Cork Hill, just off Dame Street, and is open to the public during regular hours. The ground floor houses a permanent exhibition on the history of Dublin city, which touches on various phases of the site's long occupation. The rotunda itself is worth pausing in, with its mosaic floor and encircling columns, though the earlier structure it replaced has left no visible trace above ground. Those with a particular interest in the Boyle family's Irish legacy might find it worth combining a visit here with the nearby Dublin Castle complex, which preserves other layers of the same period.