Visiting Dublin is a good excuse for a few beers in the city's Temple Bar district capped off by a quick tour of the Guinness factory. Couple this 'beer day' with a stroll along the river and you've got yourself a harmless, relaxing weekend away. I'd been there and done this before and although I had every intention of doing it again, I was intrigued to see what else Dublin had to offer.

Most people who've visited Dublin will have been to the city's famous castle, a former lynchpin of British imperial power before it was dismantled and turned into a handy tourist attraction, complete with gift shop. When you walk up the stairs most tour guides will halt the tour group and move towards a large painting of Eamon De Valera. The first taoiseach of Ireland was a mammoth figure in politics for decades and is understandably on the tour route. But many people forget that the first man to stand in the castle's court yard and receive a handover from the British was a gentleman called Michael Collins, commonly referred to as the 'big fella'.

I'd been fascinated by Collins since I read a small biography and some of his speeches in a magazine sitting on a library table in London. Collins led the guerrilla war against the British during the Irish War of Independence. He travelled to London and returned with a treaty to divide Ireland, which split the country and resulted in civil war. Collins won this struggle as well, before being assassinated on a country road shortly after the balance of power became settled.

Finding Michael Collins in Dublin, a city that he gave his life for, is easy. You can walk into the post office building on O'Connell Street, which was the centrepiece for the Easter Rising and see his painting hanging on the wall, along with the other members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Key addresses where Collins stayed and hid when every policeman was looking for him are now shop fronts or derelict houses. These too are easy to find and I think I was the only person standing in the street who knew what I was looking at. His grave, which witnessed a procession attended by hundreds of thousands of people when he died, is a quiet and remote spot in a crowded cemetery.

In 1922, the outpouring of public grief was huge. But now, there are many people in the world who have no idea who Michael Collins is. Pop his name into Google and you're faced with a number of sites that bookmark the Hollywood movie that depicted the crucial years of his life. However, although an admirable production, many think of the film as a romantic tragedy that happened to be held in the war stricken country of Ireland. When I went in search of the key sites and sounds of Collins in Dublin I was utterly deflated. He's everywhere, but at the same time the man is hidden and forgotten.

Heading back from Glasnevin cemetery, which is a remarkably long bus ride away, I contemplated the material evidence that Collins left behind and it struck me that actually Dublin is a fitting tribute to his life. The British intelligence services never had a good photo of Collins, he repeatedly walked past agents in the street, even saying good morning, but no one battered an eyelid. Even today, with the archives searched, rummaged and rifled, there are only a handful of images of him.

Collins' contemporaries did much to criticise his image and lambaste him for taking the credit for winning the War of Independence. But he simply nodded and carried on with his functions. Fittingly, De Valera became the centre of Irish politics and Collins the mythical and shadowy character of the past. As I sat with my pint of the black stuff I contemplated the life and times of a city that had been blown up more times than people remember. It's all there if you want to find it and it's made all the better when nobody else knows what you're looking at.

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