DUBLIN - A chilly, damp Dublin celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with artistic flair Sunday as the focal point for a weekend of Irish celebrations worldwide.

More than 250,000 revelers braved the occasionally snowy, sleety skies to line the streets for the traditional holiday parade, a 2-mile jaunt through the city’s heart involving performers from 46 countries.

Unusually, 8,000 tourists in town for the festivities led this year’s procession in a “people’s parade.” Many donned leprechaun costumes or deployed banners and flags of their home nations or U.S. states, with the Texans making the biggest impression as they sported “Happy St. Paddy’s Day, Y’All!” T-shirts.

One marcher, a 22-year-old engineer from Calgary, Canada, defiantly showed it wasn’t so nippy at all - by doing an hour-long walk shirtless, with only a painted-on shamrock covering his chest.

“It’s not cold!” Oliver Feniak declared as he, like many in the leisurely paced 2½ -hour parade, stopped to shake hands with onlookers standing five deep on O’Connell Bridge, which spans the River Liffey.

Sunday’s decision to put tourists in the vanguard was connected to a year-long tourism promotion called The Gathering that is organizing hundreds of clan reunions nationwide in hopes of boosting the economy. That’s sorely needed in an Ireland struggling with 14 percent unemployment, heavy emigration and a household-debt crisis after the 2008 collapse of its Celtic Tiger boom.

St. Patrick’s Day always marks the start of Ireland’s full-court press for tourists. Since 1997, Dublin has expanded the holiday into a multi-day festival featuring special children’s playgrounds, street amusement parks, concerts and walking tours. Irish President Michael D. Higgins is hosting a nationally televised TV show tonight featuring many of Ireland’s top artists and musicians, including Bono and Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

St. Patrick’s Day is being marked in skylines across the world as part of a global campaign to floodlight landmarks green at night. This year, the pyramids of Giza, the leaning tower of Pisa, Niagara Falls and the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro are among dozens of iconic spots going green for the occasion.

While tens of thousands of foreigners have made a beeline for Dublin, practically the entire Irish government has gone the other direction. Nineteen ministers have been sent to 21 countries to capitalize on a marketing opportunity unique among nations.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny marched in Saturday’s biggest U.S. St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York and is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday, when the U.S. political establishment marks the Irish holiday.

Most of Irish-America marked the holiday a day early, reflecting the view that such a notoriously boozy holiday shouldn’t happen on a Sunday. But the Irish diaspora in most of the rest of the world stuck to marking St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, as usual.

Many of Sunday’s revelers suggested they were in Dublin specifically to soak up the pub atmosphere.

Information for this article was contributed by Vernena Dobnik, Sara Burnett and Russ Bynum of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/18/2013