Belfast

Belfast Travel Guide

Belfast was a great Victorian success story, an industrial boomtown whose prosperity was built on trade -- especially linen and shipbuilding. Famously (or infamously), the Titanic was built here, giving Belfast, for a while, the nickname "Titanic Town." The key word here, of course, is was -- linen is no longer a major industry, and shipbuilding is greatly diminished.

For two decades, news about Belfast meant news about the Troubles -- until the 1994 cease-fire. Since then, Northern Ireland's capital city has benefited from major hotel investment, gentrified quaysides (or strands), a heralded performing arts center, and strenuous efforts on the part of the tourist board to claim a share of the visitors pouring into the Emerald Isle. Although the 1996 bombing of offices at the Canary Wharf in London disrupted the 1994 peace agreement, cease-fire was officially reestablished on July 20, 1997, and this embattled city began its quest for a newfound identity.

Magnificent Victorian structures still line the streets of the city center, but instead of housing linen mills or cigarette factories, they are home to chic new hotels and fashionable bars. Smart restaurants abound, and the people of Belfast, who for years would not venture out of their districts, appear to be making up for lost time. Each area of the city has changed considerably in the new peaceful era, but perhaps none more than the docklands around the Harland and Wolff shipyards, whose historic and enormous cranes, known to the locals as Sampson and Goliath, still dominate the city's skyline. New developments are springing up all around the now-deserted shipyards, from luxury hotels to modern office blocks.

In the west of the city, the physical scars of the Troubles are still evident, from the peace line that divides Catholic and Protestant West Belfast to the murals on every gable wall. Visitors are discovering that it's safe to venture beyond the city center; indeed, backpackers are becoming a regular sight on the Falls Road, and taxi tours of these once troubled areas are more popular than ever. As ever, Belfast remains a fascinating place. Emerging from the throes of a major historical transition, the city is home to some of the warmest, wryest people in all of Ireland -- all with a palpable will to move forward.