The Pole Gate, also known as the Pool Gate, has left nothing above ground; what was once a 46-foot square tower with a vaulted lower storey, a timber-lofted upper floor, and a working portcullis is now a stretch of ordinary city pavement. The 1863 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map still carried the annotation 'Pole gate (site of)', a small cartographic acknowledgement of something already long gone by that point.

The gate took its name from its proximity to a pool in the River Poddle, the same underground watercourse that still flows beneath the city today, eventually joining the Liffey near Wellington Quay. A detailed survey from 1585, preserved in the Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin, gives an unusually precise account of the structure. The tower measured 14 feet square internally, with walls 6 feet thick, and rose to 46 feet above the foundation, not counting the battlements. The lower storey was vaulted and fitted with three loops, narrow openings designed for archers or crossbowmen, while the upper storey was floored in timber. The same survey places the gate 168 feet from Stanihurst's Tower to the west and 186 feet from Genevel's Tower to the east, giving a clear sense of how the wall and its towers were spaced along this stretch of the city's defences. The gate is also visible, labelled as number 39, on John Speed's 1610 map of Dublin, one of the earliest detailed urban maps of the city.

There is nothing to see at the site itself in any conventional sense, but that is partly what makes it worth knowing about. The junction of Werburgh Street and Ship Street sits just below the ridge of Cork Hill, within easy walking distance of Dublin Castle and Christ Church Cathedral. For anyone interested in tracing the line of the medieval city wall, a copy of Speed's 1610 map is a useful companion; the wall's course can still be partly followed on foot, and other sections survive nearby with considerably more physical presence. The Pole Gate's absence is, in its own way, informative: it is a reminder of how completely the machinery of a walled medieval city can vanish into the fabric of a modern one.