Of the various markets, including those for the sale and shipping of livestock, from which it derives its name, only one survives, the former produce market, St George’s Market, now a food and craft market popular with visitors to the city. Next to the former the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices (now an hotel), stands the "cultural nucleus to Titanic Quarter", Titanic Belfast (2012) whose interactive galleries tell the liner’s ill-fated story. East Belfast developed from the Queens Bridge (1843), through Ballymacarrett, east along the Newtownards Road and north (along the east shore of the Lough) up the Holywood Road; and from the Albert Bridge (1890) south east out the Cregagh and Castlereagh roads.

Ashes to Fashion at The Ulster Museum

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.

Though the site of Belfast has been occupied since the Stone Age, its modern history began in 1611 when Baron Arthur Chichester built a new castle there. Harland and Wolff, the chief shipbuilding firm in the city, built the luxury liner. Self-guided tours with audio guides and holograms are the best way to explore its cavernous tunnel, shoebox cells and macabre graveyard.

Experience life on the inside at Crumlin Road Gaol

Home to around 2,500 people, it is the only distinctly nationalist area in the east of the river. From "leafy" avenues of increasingly substantial (and in the course of time "mixed") housing, the Upper Malone broadened out into areas of parkland and villas. Further opportunities for women on the Falls Road arose through developments in education and public health.

The ground floor exhibition has displays on Belfast’s history and culture; artifacts include a sideboard intended for the captain’s quarters on Titanic. Each of the windows along the northeast corridor commemorates a significant moment or group in the city’s history. Don’t miss exploring the SS Nomadic, the last remaining White Star Line ship in the world, which is included with a museum ticket and is docked right outside. The journey culminates with a deep dive into the RMS Titanic, whose ill-fated Atlantic voyage in 1912 eventually crippled the city’s top industry.

Here’s the Belfast to-do list we recommend to visiting friends and family!

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 ground floor exhibition has displays on Belfast’s history and culture; artifacts include a sideboard intended for the captain’s quarters on Titanic.
• But we guess you didn’t come to Belfast for Vietnamese or Thai food?
• More than just a city, Belfast is the experience of a lifetime.
• Industry drew in a new Catholic population settling largely in the west of the town—refugees from a rural poverty intensified by Belfast’s mechanisation of spinning and weaving and, in the 1840s, by famine.

Some of our favourite things to do in Belfast involve food. On the day he was buried in the city, 100,000 people lined the route from his home on the Cregagh Road to Roselawn cemetery. Belfast was the home town of former Manchester United player George Best, the 1968 European Footballer of the Year, who died in November 2005.

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 belfast cab an influx of Scottish Presbyterians.

It is a group, encompassing homemakers, full-time carers, students and retirees, that in Belfast has been swollen by the exceptionally large proportion of the population (27%) with long-term health problems or disabilities (and who, in Northern Ireland generally, are less likely to be employed than in other UK regions). On the other hand, Belfast has a high rate of people economically inactive (close to 30%). From the mid to late 19th century, there was a community of central European Jews (among its distinguished members, two-time Lord Mayor Otto Jaffe) and of Italians in Belfast. 7.17% (21,025) of people in the city claimed to have some knowledge of Ulster Scots, whilst 0.75% (2,207) claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand spoken Ulster Scots. As with many cities, Belfast’s inner city is currently characterised by the elderly, students and single young people, while families tend to live on the periphery.

Belfast Castle is a relatively modern building, having been built by the third Marquis of Donegall in 1862 in what was his deer park. You’ll also find plenty of entertainment at theatres/events such as Monday Night Comedy, Belfast MAC or the Belfast Empire Music Hall. Popular pubs include The Duke of York, The John Hewitt, The Spaniard, The Dirty Onion, McHughes, The Deer’s Head and Whites in or near the Cathedral Quarter. 53-55 Crumlin Road, BT14 6ST – Crumlin Road Gaol was built in 1849 and has had many prisoners pass through its doors including Éamon de Valera, Martin McGuinness, Michael Stone and Bobby Sands.

Industrial expansion, sectarian division

If you are short of time, you should start at the top with the major attractions, namely Titanic Belfast museum, a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour and perhaps a small-group tour to learn more about the city’s history. Inside, you’ll discover the story of the most famous ship in the world, the people who built her, and its ill-fated journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Discover the top things to do in Belfast this spring, from wandering through blooming parks and discovering nature to enjoying a packed calendar of events and outdoor activities. Other attractions in the park include the recently restored Tropical Ravine, a humid jungle glen built in 1889, rose gardens and public events ranging from live opera broadcasts to pop concerts. The college has over 53,000 students enrolled on full-time and part-time courses, making it one of the largest further education colleges in the UK and the largest in the island of Ireland. In practice, "Inst" provided a grammar education to the town’s Presbyterian families while Anglicans favoured the older Royal Belfast Academy (1785); Catholics, St Malachy’s diocesan college (1833) and Wesleyans, Methodist College Belfast (1865).