The Lord Lieutenant and his wife, dressed in deepest mourning, led the procession of dignitaries which inaugurated Nelson's Pillar in 1808. A committee of merchants and bankers had come together to subscribe to it after the Battle of Trafalgar - they had, as Maurice Craig writes in Dublin 1660- 1860, "good reason to be grateful to Nelson for reopening the sea-lanes to mercantile shipping". Francis Johnston acted as consulting architect, though the preliminary design was by William Wilkins, who built a similar Nelson's Pillar in Yarmouth 10 years later. One of Johnston's early drawings shows an eight-oared galley instead of the Nelson statue.

Political objections to the monument - as well as aesthetic and practical ones - are recorded at least from independence on, but there was huge fondness, too, for the monument: "Meet me at the pillar" was a catchphrase, and the climb to the top to view the city was a popular attraction, immortalised in an episode of Ulysses.

On March 8th, 1966, as we all know, the pillar was blown up, ostensibly to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Calls for some replacement focal point in the 18th-century street have been heard ever since.

Earlier this year the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, with Dublin Corporation, announced a competition for a replacement monument, as part of the development package for the street known as the O'Connell Street Integrated Area Plan. The competition, which is open to architects, landscape architects, urban designers and artists, has a budget of £4 million, and the deadline is next Monday.

Accepting that our streetscape is an artistic space, The Irish Times asked artists in different disciplines to contribute to the debate. Here are eight proposals for Main Street, Ireland.

Cora Venus Lunny, from Dublin, is a 16-year-old violinist, who recently became RTE Musician of the future.

This is a Peace and Liberty Pillar. Not one person alone but all of humankind shall be honoured with this monument. The dove signifies peace, its taking flight, liberty: what could be more free than a bird? It says "peace and liberty" in all languages on the length of the pillar, and at the base there is space for a plaque for the names of the peacemakers and keepers, great humanitarians and general contributors to the struggle for equality, in keeping with the theme of the pillar.

Theo Dorgan, from Cork, is a poet and director of Poetry Ireland. His most recent collections are Rosa Mundi published by Salmon Press and Sappho's Daughter published by Wave Train Press.

The custom of placing stone or bronze figures on pedestals flowered in Imperial Rome - unsurprisingly, since Rome in its days of power rocked under the heels of powerful and ego-driven warrior princes. These monuments to the cult of ubermensch are reliquaries of our nostalgia for oligarchy, tyranny, imperial and imperious masculine power.

If there is to be a monument on O'Connell Street, a monument which is in essence a column, I would like to see that hollow column crowned by an empty glass dome, a place of temporary access to heaven for any citizen who cares to be temporarily elevated. The Great Democratic Monument, every citizen privileged for a minute. An hydraulic lift inside the column would raise her temporarily to the heavens, to a vantage from which she could survey the heroin war zone and the temples of Mammon in the inner city, the spires and towers of the old dispensation, the indifferent winding Liffey, the far blue mountains of the past, the receding relentless estates of the new west.

John Kindness, from Belfast, is a painter and sculptor. His most recent exhibition was at the Hugh Lane Gallery and was based on the nursery rhyme, "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly . . . "

If Nelson's column were still with us today, there would undoubtedly be a lobby in favour of removing a British admiral from a position of such prominence in Dublin's principal thoroughfare. However, there could be few objections to the existence of a public viewing platform over 100 ft above the city. When the question of a replacement or an alternative to the Pillar arises, I find myself wanting to see that elevated platform returning to the city.

However I also want to see some vestige of the original monument put back in place, both as a reminder of the folly of using explosives to make political statements and as a recognition of a shared history. My proposition, therefore, is to have the remnants of the pillar exhumed, and have them rebuilt around a steel structure. Inside the structure a glass walled lift would carry people to the height of the original viewing point.

Peter Pearson, from Dublin, is a painter, architectural historian and conservationist. His passion for the city of Dublin can be dated from 1966, when, as an 11-year-old child, he made a model of the blasted Nelson's Pillar. His next exhibition, Dublin At Night, will be in Dublin Castle.

My pillar would be a stone column, having a spiral staircase, probably constructed of glass and steel, around it. The stairs might be partially enclosed, or open. The spiral could have designs, representations from Irish history, rather in the way that Trajan's column in Rome does.

Above all, the column would act as a viewing platform for the people of Dublin to look out over their city. Why a column? The pillar, classical in origin and proportion, circular and strongly vertical, is, I believe, inherently attractive to the human eye.

Paula Meehan, from Dublin, is a poet. Her most recent collection is Pillow Talk, published by Gallery Press. She is opposed to a new pillar and has not contributed a drawing.

My favourite piece of public art on O'Connell Street, or more accurately adjacent to O'Connell Street, is Rachel Joynt's installation on the traffic island just at the southside of O'Connell Bridge. Naked footprints, shoe prints, high-heel prints, trainer prints, tracks of dog, bird, cat, human, bicycle, fallen leaf, mingle in and criss-cross each other in bronze or brass: an imaginative and subtle reflection of what happens on the traffic island itself and in the wider city.

I suspect the day of the monumental erection to A Great Person is over. In any case we've enough erections on O'Connell Street. Even the Smurfit Monument looks like some class of a horizontal erection. As my caustic aunt remarked "Apt enough to commemorate a cardboard mogul, considering the shelter that material gives to so many of the city's homeless."

If we were serious about Anna Livia, then keeping the river pure and fit for fish would be a greater tribute and more lasting monument than any stone or bronze. To pass on a city unpolluted and hospitable to varied life forms - not least the human - would be the best thing to have our descendants remember us by. What a blessing it used be to have peregrine falcons living and rearing their young up on the now-gone gasometer. Will they return, I wonder, to the skyscrapers of the new dockland development?

Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, from Donegal, is the vocalist and one of the fiddlers in the leading Irish traditional group, Altan. Their most recent album is Runaway Sunday, on Virgin Records.

The metal design is based on the scroll of a fiddle and reflects the important role of music in Irish life. The soft curves of the scroll also incorporate elements of ancient Celtic art. Appropriately, the curved prow of a Viking longship is also called to mind. The "eye" of the scroll should be cobalt blue glass. The whole piece could be uplit from inside. The height of the piece should match the building line of the street. Viewed from the front and back, the piece is solid, from the side, the open, gold-coloured filigree metal work is visible, it is set on a circular, stepped stone base.

Conall Morrison, from Armagh, is an associate director at the Abbey Theatre, where is production of Boucicault's The Colleen Bawn is now running. His production of Tarry Flynn recently toured to the National Theatre, London. He is working on a production of the musical Martin Guerre for Cameron Mackintosh. Morrison's pillar is a statue of John Hume.

Mick Lally, from Mayo, began his acting career with Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe. His most recent theatre role was as Gabriel in the Macnas production of The Dead School by Pat McCabe, but whether he likes it or not, he is best known as Miley in Glenroe.

I believe it would have to be a column of some sort (above). There would be access to the top of the column via steps climbing through the centre, or on the outside. Much would depend on the artist or designer. However, the basic idea would be that the history and development of Dublin would be depicted from earliest times. Various images would be used to depict different eras.

Obviously the Vikings and Normans would be represented, and whatever settlements existed before the Vikings. It might be a good idea if the Viking depiction could be located in the column at the ground level of the initial Viking settlement. It would also be good if excerpts from the literature of the time were included, so that quite a comprehensive picture of a period would emerge. In short, it would be an anthology of images.