The Sunday Times

Walk along Pleasants Street, in central Dublin, and the Olympic Ballroom will not strike you as a masterpiece. But go through the doors and you encounter an interior so dramatic it could save the building from demolition. The ballroom was built in 1940 as a skating rink and its rough-cast, stepped façade is of a type used for countless Irish buildings with "modern" or fashionable uses, such as petrol stations and cinemas.