🇬🇧 Northern Ireland
Belfast
Belfast (population 345,000 — the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland and the second-largest city on the island of Ireland) is one of the most dramatically transformed cities in Europe: from the most dangerous city in Western Europe during the "Troubles" (the 30-year conflict between Nationalist (Catholic, Irish republican) and Unionist (Protestant, British loyalist) communities that left over 3,500 people dead between 1969 and 1998, with Belfast as its epicenter — the car bombings, the sectarian assassinations, the British Army checkpoints and the "peace walls" (the 99 concrete and steel barriers separating the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, some reaching 9 meters in height, still standing today)) to the vibrant, creative city that now receives 2.5 million visitors per year and was named one of the "52 places to go in 2018" by the New York Times. The most important transformation moments: the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (the peace deal signed on Good Friday (April 10, 1998) by the British and Irish governments and the major political parties of Northern Ireland — the most important peace agreement in modern European history: reducing the Northern Ireland conflict from a full-scale political violence to a managed political disagreement) and the opening of the Titanic Belfast museum in 2012 (the world-class museum on the site of the shipyard where the RMS Titanic was designed and built (the Harland & Wolff shipyard in the Belfast Docklands — the most important shipyard in British history: the Titanic was the largest man-made moving object in the world when she was launched from Belfast in 1911): named the "World's Leading Tourist Attraction" at the World Travel Awards in 2016.