Belfast travel guide

Top 10 sights in Belfast

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Kenneth Allen · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Hillsborough Castle

   A Georgian country house in County Down, built for the Hill family in the 1770s, which served as the official residence of the Governor of Northern Ireland from 1924 until the post was abolished in 1973. It is now the royal residence in the region, opened to visitors by Historic Royal Palaces since 2014.

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2. 

   2© Irid Escent · CC BY-SA 2.0

   SS Nomadic

   A White Star Line tender launched at Belfast on 25 April 1911 to carry passengers and mail out to the Olympic and Titanic at Cherbourg, and the only ship designed by Thomas Andrews still afloat. She was recovered from a Seine mooring in 2006 and is displayed in the Titanic Quarter.

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3. 

   3© Portwilliamborn · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Belfast Castle

   A sandstone mansion of 1870 in Scottish baronial style on the slope of Cave Hill at 120 metres, built for the Marquess of Donegall's family. Nine cat images are hidden in the gardens, following a superstition that a cat must live at the castle for luck.

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4. 

   4© Stewart · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Carrickfergus Castle

   A Norman castle of about 1177 on a basalt promontory in Belfast Lough, built by John de Courcy and besieged at least six times — by King John, the Scots, the French and William of Orange, who landed here in 1690. It served as a garrison and prison until 1928.

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5. 

   5© Robert Young · CC BY 2.0

   Botanic Gardens

   An eleven-hectare public garden on Stranmillis Road beside Queen's University, laid out in 1828. Its Palm House of 1840 by Charles Lanyon is one of the earliest curvilinear cast-iron glasshouses anywhere, predating Kew's.

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   Ravenhill Stadium

   A rugby ground in east Belfast, home of Ulster Rugby, holding about 18,000. Ireland played international matches on it until the 1950s and it has been rebuilt in stages since 2009.

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7. 

   7© The original uploader was Stuart at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 2.0

   St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast

   An Anglican cathedral on Donegall Street, begun in 1899 in Romanesque revival, unusual in serving two dioceses at once. Its stainless steel Spire of Hope, forty metres tall, was added in 2007 and rises through the roof above the crossing.

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   St Peter's Cathedral

   The Catholic cathedral of Down and Connor, begun in 1860 on the Falls Road in the middle of west Belfast, with twin spires of about sixty metres. Three separate choirs sing in it and it has been the focus of the district through the Troubles.

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   HMS Caroline

   A C-class light cruiser of 1914 that fought at Jutland in 1916 and is the only surviving Royal Navy ship from that battle. She was preserved in Belfast in 1924 as a naval reserve drill ship and is now a museum in Alexandra Dock.

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10. 

    10© Robert Nash · CC BY 2.5

    Ulster Museum

    The largest museum in Northern Ireland, in the Botanic Gardens, with about eight thousand square metres of galleries covering art, archaeology, ethnography and natural science. Gold and jewellery recovered from the Spanish Armada wreck Girona off the Antrim coast is its most famous holding.

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Popular tickets & tours in Belfast

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1. 

   1© Paul McIlroy · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Milltown Cemetery

   A cemetery in west Belfast between the Falls Road and the motorway, the main Catholic burial ground of the city. Its republican plot holds the hunger strikers of 1981, and three mourners were killed here by a loyalist gunman at a funeral in March 1988.

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2. 

   2© Agadant · CC BY-SA 3.0

   HM Prison Crumlin Road

   A prison of 1845 on the Crumlin Road designed by Charles Lanyon, and the only Victorian prison left in Northern Ireland, connected to the courthouse opposite by a tunnel under the road. Seventeen men were executed in it; it closed in 1996 and now runs tours.

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3. 

   3© Own work · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Titanic Quarter

   A 75-hectare waterfront regeneration on Queen's Island, on the Harland and Wolff shipyard where the Titanic was built, taking its name from her. Titanic Belfast, the slipways, the drawing offices and the film studios that made Game of Thrones are all in it.

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4. 

   4© Albert Bridge · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Short Strand

   A small working-class Catholic and nationalist district on the east bank of the Lagan, surrounded by Protestant and unionist east Belfast. Its position made it a flashpoint through the Troubles and peace walls still divide parts of it.

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5. 

   5© No machine-readable author provided. Gerry Lynch~commonswiki assumed (based on c · CC BY 2.5

   New Lodge

   A working-class Catholic district immediately north of Belfast city centre, dominated by tower blocks built in the 1960s. Murals along the New Lodge Road commemorate residents killed during the Troubles.

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   Belfast Zoo

   A zoo on the northeastern slope of Cave Hill above the Antrim Road, opened in 1934 and the second oldest on the island of Ireland after Dublin. Its steep site gives views over Belfast Lough from most of the enclosures.

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7. 

   7© Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Albert Memorial Clock

   A clock tower of 1869 on Queen's Square honouring Prince Albert, built on wooden piles in reclaimed sleech so that it leans about 1.25 metres out of true. Local humour calls it Belfast's answer to Pisa.

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8. 

   8© Dennis Reynolds · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Movilla Abbey

   The site of a monastery at Newtownards founded in 540 by Saint Finnian, one of the most important in early Christian Ulster and a centre of learning that held an early copy of the Gospels. Fragments of a later abbey church and a graveyard remain.

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9. 

   9© Andrew Muir from Bangor, UK · CC BY 2.0

   Bangor Abbey

   An abbey founded at Bangor in 558 by Saint Comgall, famous across Europe for its learning and its severe rule, from which Columbanus set out to found monasteries in France and Italy. The Antiphonary of Bangor, written here about 690, survives in Milan.

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10. 

    10© Lordjaysus (talk) · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Giant's Ring

    A Neolithic henge at Ballynahatty near Shaw's Bridge, an earth bank 3.5 metres high enclosing a circle 180 metres across — about 2.8 hectares. A passage tomb stands inside it, and it was used for horse racing in the eighteenth century.

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