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All four extend beyond the city boundaries to include parts of Antrim and Newtownabbey and Lisburn and Castlereagh districts. Belfast City Council is responsible for a range of powers and services, including land-use and community planning, parks and recreation, building control, arts and cultural heritage. Belfast Metropolitan College ("Belfast Met") is a further education college with three main campuses around the city, including several smaller buildings. The Linen Quarter’, an area south of City Hall once dominated by linen warehouses, now includes, in addition to cafés, bars and restaurants, a dozen hotels (including the 23-storey Grand Central Hotel), and the city’s two principal Victorian-era cultural venues, the Grand Opera House and the Ulster Hall. The completion in 2023 of Ulster University’s enhanced Belfast campus (in "one of the largest higher education capital builds in Europe") and the determination of Queen’s University to compete with the private sector in the provision of student housing, has fostered the construction downtown of multiple new student residences. These include Cupar Way where tourists are informed that, at 45 feet, the barrier is "three times higher than the Berlin Wall and has been in place for twice as long".
Ashes to Fashion at The Ulster Museum
From there, spend some time exploring the free museum before strolling through the gardens. When the weather’s on your side (invariably difficult to predict, irrespective of the time of year you visit Belfast) take a hike up Cave Hill, which rises a humble 368m above the low-lying city. As the late Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney once opined, “The end of art is peace” – a sentiment the Belfast black taxi tour echoes. On long summer evenings, retreat to the beer gardens at The Thirsty Goat or The Dirty Onion (patio heaters and awnings included). Filming locations for the blockbuster fantasy series are littered across the country, and major scenes were shot in Belfast studios, so visitors to the city can also travel to the places where fictional Westeros once became a reality.
The iconic Titanic Belfast visitor experience stands tall on the same spot that the world’s most famous sinking ship was built. Of course for many people, the name Belfast brings to mind the horrors of ‘The Troubles’ and while people remember the past, most people you’ll meet are positive, inclusive and forward looking. Despite its troubled history, today Belfast is an enjoyable, pleasant city to visit with an onward and upwards vibe. Belfast is a quick two-hour drive from Dublin and the city is also connected to Dublin by train and bus.
It is "the largest integrated transport facility on the island of Ireland" with bus stands, railway platforms, and facilities for taxis and bicycles. Bus services in the city proper and the nearer suburbs are operated by Translink Metro, with services focusing on linking residential districts with the city centre on 12 quality bus corridors running along main radial roads, The Ulster Hospital, Upper Newtownards Road, Dundonald, on the eastern edge of the city, first founded as the Ulster Hospital for Women and Sick Children in 1872, is the major acute hospital for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust.
Crumlin Road Gaol
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- (According to the 2021 census, 15.5% of people in the city have some knowledge of Irish, 4% speak it daily).
- Celebrate Belfast’s dynamic arts scene at this popular festival in the city’s cultural heart.
- Introduced in 2018, it is a bus rapid transit system linking East Belfast, West Belfast and the Titanic Quarter from the City Centre.
- It has grown from its original August Féile on the Falls Road, to a year-round programme with a broad range of arts events, talks and discussions.
From the 1760s, profits from the trade financed improvements in the town’s commercial infrastructure, including the Lagan Canal, new docks and quays, and the construction of the White Linen Hall which together attracted to Belfast the linen trade that had formerly gone through Dublin. The compilers of Ulster-Scots use various transcriptions of local pronunciations of "Belfast" (with which they sometimes are also content) including Bilfawst, Bilfaust or Baelfawst. At the same time, new immigrants are adding to the growing number of residents unwilling to identify with either of the two communal traditions. Their descendants’ disaffection with Ireland’s Anglican establishment contributed to the rebellion of 1798, and to the union with Great Britain that followed in 1801—later regarded as a key to the town’s industrial transformation. While chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town’s early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish Presbyterians.
Take a local tour and learn more about Belfast’s history
Their route brought them down the Falls Road and into what are now remnants of an older Catholic enclave around St Mary’s Church, the town’s first Catholic chapel (opened in 1784 with Presbyterian subscriptions), and Smithfield Market. Meanwhile, road schemes, including the terminus of the M1 motorway and the Westlink, demolished a mixed dockland community, Sailortown, and severed the streets linking the Shankill area and the rest of both north and west Belfast to the city centre. The Greater Shankill area, including Crumlin and Woodvale, is over the line from the Belfast North parliamentary/assembly constituency, but is physically separated from the rest of Belfast West by an extensive series of separation barriers—peace walls—owned (together with five daytime gates into the Falls area) by the Department of Justice. To the north, it stretched out along roads which drew into the town migrants from Scots-settled hinterland of County Antrim. In 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history. Beginning in 1970 with the Falls curfew, and followed in 1971 by internment, this included counterinsurgency measures directed chiefly at the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
(According to the 2021 census, 15.5% of people in the city have some knowledge of Irish, 4% speak it daily). Since 2001, buoyed by increasing numbers of tourists, the city council has promoted a number of cultural quarters. Such figures, however, do not include all those living in severely overcrowded conditions, involuntarily sharing with other households on a long-term basis, or sleeping rough in taxi numbers belfast hidden locations. This is against a background (in 2023) of 2,317 people (0.67% of residents) presenting as homeless, many of whom are in temporary accommodation and shelters. New townhouse and apartments schemes are being developed for the city’s quays, and for Titanic Quarter. But retail footfall in the centre is limited by competition with out-of-town shopping centres and with internet retailing.
Celebrate local life with a lively year-round calendar of events Discover a wilder, greener side to Belfast with walks, cycles and fabulous local food. Centuries of history combined with memorable experiences – what will you discover first? Two unique cities just two hours apart by train – discover Ireland’s ultimate city break.
Despite the DUP’s derailment of devolved government in protest, local business leaders largely welcomed the new trade regime, hailing the promise of dual EU-GB access as a critical opportunity. Significant projects included Victoria Square, the Cathedral Quarter, Laganside with the Odyssey complex and the landmark Waterfront Hall, the new Titanic Quarter with its Titanic Belfast visitor attraction, and the development of the original Short’s harbour airfield as Belfast City Airport. Northern Ireland’s peace dividend since the 1990s, which includes a marked increase in inward investment, has contributed to a large-scale redevelopment of the city centre. These include a new deepwater quay to accommodate, in addition to larger cruise liners, an expansion the port’s capacity for offshore wind turbine assembly and installation. In recent years Harland & Wolff, which at peak production in the Second World War had employed around 35,000 people, has had a workforce of no more than two or three hundred refurbishing oil rigs and fabricating off-shore wind turbines.
Catch a ride on a hop-on hop off bus tour
West Belfast is a canvas of history and community arts, characterised by vibrant murals that tell the stories of its cultural heritage. From brunches to dinners and food tours that wind through the city’s most flavourful streets, Belfast rewards the curious eater at every turn. Get out in the fresh air and enjoy a relaxing walk with the family in Belfast, and beyond this… One of the great things about Belfast is that within a short drive from the city you can discover a… Take a day trip and discover the stunning parks, enchanting woodland and coastal scenery in Belfast…
Here’s the Belfast to-do list we recommend to visiting friends and family!
The Titanic Belfast museum, rising from the grounds of the Harland & Wolff shipyard, is much more than a maritime showcase. Museums and tours nourish history buffs, while enthusiastic hikers can find nature on the city’s doorstep. Sign up to receive inspiring ideas, events and offers which showcase the best of Belfast and Northern Ireland! Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter is the city’s buzzing, creative soul, where Belfast’s vibrant cultural life bubbles visibly to the surface. In South Belfast, modernity collides with tradition, creating a vibrant atmosphere enriched by a dynamic cultural scene. Discover iconic landmarks like Belfast Castle, explore wildlife at Belfast Zoo, or delve into the past at Crumlin Road Gaol and Clifton House.