Belfast grew from a Norman ford settlement into the linen and shipbuilding capital of the world, then spent thirty years as a front line. Three days trace that arc through castles, Georgian churches, war memorials, murals and the buildings that ran an empire's industry.
The best-preserved Norman castle in Ireland, begun by John de Courcy in 1177 and besieged by Scots, Irish, English and French over 800 years. William III landed here in 1690. Open daily 10:00–17:00 (Apr–Sep), shorter in winter.
Founded 1182 by de Courcy, the oldest church in continuous use in Northern Ireland. The Chichester family aisle of 1614 holds a monument to Sir Arthur Chichester, the planter who effectively founded modern Belfast. Free entry.
A Neolithic henge of about 2700 BC, 200 metres across, with a passage-grave dolmen at its centre and human remains excavated in 1917. Free, unstaffed and open in daylight hours on the southern edge of the city.
An 1830s Georgian mansion on the site of a medieval Malone estate, burned in a 1976 bombing and rebuilt. The surrounding demesne runs down to the Lagan where the Norman-era ford crossings first put Belfast on the map.
The national collection covers the 1798 rebellion, the linen boom, partition and a permanent Troubles and Beyond gallery opened 2018. Also holds Armada gold from the Girona wreck. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
The Baroque Revival hall opened 1906 at the height of linen wealth. The memorial garden, added 2012, is the only place listing all 1,512 Titanic dead by name, regardless of class — a deliberate break with the 1920 plinth.
The 1932 Portland stone seat of Northern Ireland's parliament, approached by a mile-long processional avenue. Free guided tours weekdays explain the Unionist majority years, direct rule from 1972 and the 1998 Agreement.
Opened 1869 with an underground wall separating Catholic and Protestant graves. Holds Victorian industrialists, cholera pits and war dead of the 36th (Ulster) Division, cut down at Thiepval on 1 July 1916.
The republican heartland: the Bobby Sands mural at Sinn Féin's Sevastopol Street office, the Garden of Remembrance and a rolling wall of murals linking Irish republicanism to Palestine, Cuba and Catalonia.
The longest of Belfast's peace lines, first raised as temporary barbed wire in 1969 and now 8 metres high and nearly a kilometre long. Gates between the Falls and Shankill still close nightly — a barrier outliving the war by decades.
The loyalist counterpart: UVF and UDA murals, the 36th Ulster Division commemorations and the site of the 1993 Shankill Road bombing at Frizzell's fish shop, which killed ten people and nearly collapsed the peace talks.
Belfast's finest Georgian building, opened 1774 as the Poor House and run by the merchants who also founded the United Irishmen. Henry Joy McCracken, hanged in 1798, was a subscriber; the Society still operates today.