The former ‘Floozy in the Jacuzzi’

The Anna Livia Sculpture was designed by the sculptor Éamonn O’ Doherty and commissioned by businessman Michael Smurfit, in memory of his father for the 1988 Dublin’s Millennium Celebrations. Anna Livia is the personification of the River Liffey and means ‘River of Life’ in Irish. The sculpture is therefore intended to interpret the river as a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her. The sculpture was once located on O’Connell Street however it was removed in 2001 to make room for the Dublin Spire and to protect it from fairy liquid, rubbish, and drunken stag parties! At this time she was known as ‘The Floozie in the Jacuzzi’! She was then ‘cleaned and scrubbed’ and relocated to the Croppies Memorial Park in 2011. Anna Livia Plurabelle is also the name of a character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake who also embodies the spirit of the river.