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Belfast has enjoyed a renaissance in the brewing and culinary arts in recent years. Whether you’re planning a weekend getaway, romantic escape or family city break, Belfast offers a wide range of accommodation to suit every style and budget. Once you’re here, you’re spoilt for choice – Belfast has great road, rail and bus connections to the rest of Northern Ireland, so you’re in for an easy and memorable trip. W5 is an award-winning science and discovery centre, located in the Odyssey complex at the gateway… In the Titanic Quarter you’ll find the Titanic Hotel, a deluxe boutique hotel offering a unique maritime experience in its Harland & Wolff inspired rooms. The nearby Muddlers Club has become something of a Belfast institution as famous for its theatrical open kitchen as its mouth-watering food.
Today, it’s full of Belfast’s young and those in the know out for a night of craic and fine food. Sunday includes the lot and even throws in music from local bands. Saturday mixes specialty foods from around the world with stalls displaying handmade crafts, flowers, plants, local photography, pottery, glass and metal work. Belfast has become a food mecca and it’s impossible to walk the city without being lured in by world-class food. Compact, walkable and packed with friendly locals, Belfast delivers history, food, music and bold energy, all within easy reach for a weekend escape.
What famous ship was built in Belfast?
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. 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.
Experience life on the inside at Crumlin Road Gaol
- Next door, its successor, Marks and Spencers, is housed behind the red sandstone, Florentine Gothic, facade (1869) of a rival linen business that was burned out in the Blitz.
- Experience an authentic black cab tour of Belfast and discover the murals and unique characters of both the nationalist and unionist communities.
- Today, it’s full of Belfast’s young and those in the know out for a night of craic and fine food.
- Other sportspeople celebrated in the city include double world snooker champion Alex "Hurricane" Higgins and world champion boxers Wayne McCullough, Rinty Monaghan and Carl Frampton.
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. At the end of the Second World War, the Unionist government undertook programmes of "slum clearance" (the Blitz had exposed the "uninhabitable" condition of much of the city’s housing) which involved decanting populations out of mill and factory built red-brick terraces and into new peripheral housing estates. In the greatest loss of life in any air raid outside of London, more than a thousand people were killed.
Self-guided tours with audio guides and holograms are the best way to explore its cavernous tunnel, shoebox cells and macabre graveyard. Vendors are mostly the craftspeople, bakers, fishers and farmers who grew, caught or created what they are selling, and they are happy to chat about their wares. Though the market, situated in a Victorian building, is a mainstay of the Belfast townscape, the goods on offer are cyclical. The kitchen is partially open to the dining floor, creating a sense of theater within its urbane confines, while the mixologists pay as much attention to detail for the cocktails as the chefs exercise toward the food.
Crumlin Road Gaol
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. Specialist services include cardiac surgery, critical care and the Regional Trauma Centre.
The Belfast Marathon is run annually on May Day, The 41st Marathon in 2023, with related events (Wheelchair Race, Team Relay and 8 Mile Walk) attracted 15,000 participants. The 100-acres of Ormeau Park were opened to the public in 1871 on what was the last demesne of the town’s former proprietors, the Chichesters, Marquesses of Donegall. Introduced in 2018, it is a bus rapid transit system linking East Belfast, West Belfast and the Titanic Quarter from the City Centre. In addition to belfast cabs belfast its extensive freight business, the Belfast Port offers car-ferry sailings, operated by Stena Line, to Cairnryan in Scotland (5 Sailings Daily. 2 hours 22 minutes) and to Liverpool-Birkenhead (14 sailings weekly. 8 hours).
The 14 best restaurants in Belfast
After a cotton boom and bust, the town emerged as the global leader in the production of linen goods (mill, and finishing, work largely employing women and children), winning the moniker "Linenopolis". When early in the American War of Independence, Belfast Lough was raided by the privateer John Paul Jones, the townspeople assembled their own Volunteer militia. Sign up for our email to enjoy your city without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush). If hills aren’t really your thing, you can still enjoy Cave Hill Country Park which surrounds the castle and is a popular place for Belfast folk to take a walk.
Here’s the Belfast to-do list we recommend to visiting friends and family!
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?
(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 hidden locations.
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.
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. If you have more time you can then work your way on down the list but as touristing is such thirsty work, it makes sense if you leap-frog to section 7 – visit a pub – at some point during your day. In those days Belfast’s shipyards dominated global shipbuilding, and it is no surprise therefore that Titanic, ‘the biggest ship in the world’, was built here. You’ll find Belfast just over two hours north of Dublin travelling by car/train or bus – see the ‘Getting to Belfast’ info below — and an hour and a half from Giant’s Causeway on the North Coast. Belfast is the largest city in Northern Ireland and while it is famous for the Belfast Titanic museum and ‘Troubles Tours’ around The Falls Road and Shankill areas, there is quite a bit more to enjoy about the city.