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There’s an abandoned theatre buried in the basement of Busáras station. The Eblana Theatre once seated 240 people. It takes its name from one of the ancient settlements that gave birth to Dublin, first cited by Ptolemy in 140 CE. Eblana`s brutalist design, without wings or traditional forms of stage architecture, was in keeping with the architect Michael Scotts Busáras station aesthetic. Although the acoustics were apparently excellent, as was the intimate ambience. The main Busáras structure took six years to build, construction starting in 1947 and finishing in 1953, at a then stratospheric cost over £1 million. And it was controversial from the start. This modern piece of architecture was paradoxically dated looking from the get-go. The Eblana Theatre itself opened on the 17th of September 1959. For the first two years, the vaguely depressing theatre entertained passengers until their buses came, showing newsreel clips on a cinema screen. Thespian and director Phyllis Ryan`s(1920 –2011) Gemini Productions drama company took over the lease and showcased the idiosyncratic little space during the Dublin Theatre Festival. This prestigious, independent alternative to the Abbey Theatre championed playwrights like John B. Keane Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. But even this veneer of artistic glamour did little to elevate the Eblana. One constant source of scorn against the little space was its placement close to the large seedy bus station public toilets. Anecdotes abounded of intoxicated travellers strolling into the middle of a play, seeking a place to take a leak before their bus arrived. This led to the witty insult that Busáras had "The only public toilet in Dublin with its own theatre." After Gemini productions parted ways the Andrew's Lane Theatre briefly took over, then the Northside Theatre Company. Eblana`s days were numbered, and it closed in 1995. There was much talk of refurbishment and relaunch as the new home of the Fry Model Railway in 2012. However, the estimated millions in funding never manifested. The most recent plan was converting the unique space in to a training centre for Bus Éireann staff, with Dublin City Council granting planning permission. This is earmarked to happen when Bus Éireann relocates its headquarters from Broadstone to the Busáras site. Until then, though, the errie theatre has become a bizarre time capsule. Its tattered seats, creaking floorboards, and peeling posters gently dilapidating in the subterranean Dublin air. The abandoned auditorium feels like a spectral audience and cast has just stepped out a moment ago, as if it could very easily screen horror movies to an assembly of ghosts at night after the rest of Busáras has shut up shop and gone home. SOURCES: Irish Theatre Archive and the Irish Architecture Foundation. https://t.co/jsalFNZvTr https://t.co/wlC61e5Msb