Dublin

Ask any Dubliner what's happening and you may hear echoes of one of W. B. Yeats's most-quoted lines: "All changed, changed utterly." You can practically hear the roar as this old city on the western shore of the Irish Sea transforms itself into Western Europe's fastest-growing urban tourist destination -- a center of new construction and restoration.

Even though it has shown recent signs of slowing down, "the Celtic Tiger" -- the nickname given to the roaring Irish economy -- has turned Dublin into a boomtown. Elegant shops and hotels, galleries, art-house cinemas, coffeehouses, and a stunning variety of restaurants have sprung up on almost every street in the capital.

Roughly half of the Irish Republic's population of 3.6 million people live in Dublin and its suburbs. It's a city of young people -- astonishingly so. Students from all over Ireland attend Trinity College and the city's dozen other universities and colleges. On weekends, their counterparts from Paris, London, and Rome fly in, swelling the city's youthful contingent, crowding its pubs and clubs to overflowing. After graduating, more and more young people are sticking around rather than emigrating to New York or London, filling the raft of new jobs set up by multinational corporations and contributing to the hubbub that's evident everywhere.

All this development has not been without growing pains. With London-like house prices, increased crime, and major traffic problems, Dubliners are at last suffering the woes so familiar to city dwellers around the world. An influx of immigrants has caused resentment among some of the otherwise famously hospitable Irish. "Me darlin' Dublin's dead and gone," so goes the old traditional ballad, but the rebirth, at times difficult and a little messy, has been a spectacular success. And enough of the old Dublin remains to enchant. After all, it's the fundamentals -- museums with astonishing works, lovely parks, the Georgian elegance of Merrion Square, the Norman drama of Christ Church Cathedral, a foamy pint at one of Dublin's 1,000-odd pubs -- that still gratify.