Things to Do in Belfast, a Local Guide
I am out in this city every week, and the question I hear most is some version of the same one. What is actually worth my time here? This is my answer, written as the list I would give a friend.
Belfast is small, which is its great advantage. You can stand at the City Hall and be at the Titanic slipways in ten minutes, the peace walls in fifteen, and on top of Cave Hill looking down at the whole thing in twenty. Two days covers the city properly. One long day covers it if you keep moving.
Everything below is here because it earns its place, with the opening times and the prices as they stand in September 2026 so you can plan around them. There are also sections on the best things to do in Belfast that cost nothing, and on things to do in Belfast with kids, because those are the two questions that come up most after the main one.
What Is in This Guide
Titanic Belfast
If you only do one thing in Belfast, do this. Titanic Belfast opened in 2012 on the exact slipways where the ship was designed, built and launched in 1911, and the building itself is shaped to echo the prows of four ships at the scale of the real hull.
Nine galleries take you from the Belfast of the shipyards, through the building of the ship, the launch, the fit out, the maiden voyage and the sinking, and on to the discovery of the wreck. There is a ride through a reconstruction of the shipyard, and the sections on the people who built her are the parts that stay with most visitors.
Your ticket includes SS Nomadic, the last White Star Line ship afloat, berthed a couple of minutes away. Allow two to three hours for both and do not arrive in the last hour before closing.
Visitor information
Opening times. Seasonal. January to March 09:45 to 17:00, April and May 08:50 to 18:00, June 08:30 to 19:00, July and August 08:30 to 19:30, September 08:30 to 18:00, October 08:50 to 18:00, November and December 09:50 to 17:00. Last admission is 1 hour 40 minutes before closing. Closed 24 to 26 December and 12 January.
Guide prices. Around £24.95 to £26.95 adult and £11 to £13 child depending on the date, with SS Nomadic included.
Facilities. Cafe, restaurant, shop, toilets, lifts to every gallery and full step free access.
Where it is. 1 Olympic Way, Queen’s Road, Titanic Quarter, Belfast BT3 9EP. About ten minutes from the city centre by road, and walkable from the Lagan in about twenty five.
What is nearby. SS Nomadic, the Titanic Slipways, HMS Caroline and the Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices are all within a short walk.
Crumlin Road Gaol
Crumlin Road Gaol was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, built between 1843 and 1845, and took its first prisoners in 1846. It stayed in use for 150 years and closed in 1996. Seventeen men were executed inside it, the last being Robert McGladdery in 1961 for the murder of Pearl Gamble.
The guided tour takes you through the four wings, the cells, the condemned man’s cell and the execution chamber, and along the tunnel that runs under the road to the courthouse opposite. Prisoners were walked through that tunnel so they never saw daylight between trial and cell.
It is told straight, without sensationalism, which is why it works. Tours run sixty to ninety minutes.
Visitor information
Opening times. Monday to Friday 10:30 to 15:30, Saturday and Sunday 10:00 to 16:00. Tours last about 60 to 90 minutes. Evening and paranormal tours run on selected dates.
Guide prices. Adult £18.50 at the door and £17.50 online, child £12.00 and £10.50, concession £17.00 and £15.50, family £55.00 and £49.00.
Facilities. Cuffs Bar and Grill on site, shop, toilets. Some stairs on the tour route.
Where it is. 53 to 55 Crumlin Road, Belfast BT14 6ST, about ten minutes north of the city centre by road.
What is nearby. The courthouse sits opposite, and the Shankill and Falls murals are a short drive west.
The Peace Walls and the Murals
This is the part of Belfast most visitors are curious about and least sure how to ask about, so let me be plain. The peace walls went up in 1969 as temporary structures meant to last six months. Several are still standing, some of the gates in them are still closed at night, and people live on both sides of them.
The murals on the Falls Road and the Shankill Road are the other half of the story. They are not street art. They are a record of what each community believed, feared and lost, and they are still being painted over and repainted as the politics move.
You can walk or drive it yourself for nothing. What you cannot get on your own is the context, which is the whole value here, and which is why most people do this part with a guide who can tell it fairly from both sides.
Visitor information
Opening times. Open streets, any time of day. Some peace line gates close overnight.
Guide prices. Free to walk or drive.
Facilities. Shops and cafes along both the Falls and the Shankill. Nothing at the walls themselves.
Where it is. Cupar Way is the best known stretch, running between the Falls and the Shankill in west Belfast, about ten minutes from the city centre.
What is nearby. Crumlin Road Gaol, Clonard Monastery and the city centre.
Belfast City Hall
Belfast City Hall is the building the city is arranged around, and most things to do in Belfast city centre are within a ten minute walk of its front lawn. It was completed in 1906 to mark Belfast becoming a city, a status granted by Queen Victoria in 1888 in recognition of the linen, rope, tobacco, engineering and shipbuilding that made it.
Sir Alfred Brumwell Thomas designed it in Baroque Revival, in Portland stone, with a dome that shows up in every photograph of the city centre. Inside there is a free exhibition telling the city’s history across sixteen rooms, and the grounds hold the Titanic Memorial Garden, which lists every person who died, crew and passengers together, without class distinction.
The guided tour is worth the six pounds. It takes you into the council chamber, the great hall and the rooms the public does not normally see.
Visitor information
Opening times. The grounds are open daily. The exhibition and the guided tours run to City Hall’s own schedule, so check at the desk inside on the day.
Guide prices. Grounds and exhibition free. Guided tours £6 for an adult and free for children, though children still need a ticket, and they go first come first served at reception.
Facilities. Bobbin Coffee Shop, toilets, shop, step free access.
Where it is. Donegall Square, Belfast BT1 5GS, in the middle of the city centre.
What is nearby. St George’s Market, the Linen Quarter, the Crown Liquor Saloon and the main shopping streets, all on foot.
St George’s Market
St George’s Market only opens three days a week, and which day you are in Belfast decides whether you get it. It is the last surviving Victorian covered market in the city, built in three phases between 1890 and 1896, and the building alone justifies the five minute walk from City Hall.
Friday is the variety market, fish, fruit, plants, books and secondhand. Saturday is food and craft with live music through the middle of the day. Sunday leans to craft, art and local food. Entry costs nothing.
If noise is difficult for you or somebody with you, there are quiet hours each morning when the music is turned off.
Visitor information
Opening times. Friday 8am to 2pm, Saturday 9am to 3pm, Sunday 10am to 3pm. Closed Monday to Thursday. Quiet hours with the music off run 9am to 10am Friday and Saturday and 10am to 11am Sunday.
Guide prices. Free to enter.
Facilities. Food stalls, seating, toilets, step free access.
Where it is. 12 to 20 East Bridge Street, Belfast BT1 3NQ, five minutes on foot from City Hall.
What is nearby. City Hall, the Waterfront Hall and the Cathedral Quarter.
The Ulster Museum and Botanic Gardens
The Ulster Museum sits inside the Botanic Gardens in the Queen’s Quarter and costs nothing to enter, which makes it the best wet weather answer in Belfast.
The collections run from the natural world and the dinosaurs through to art, and the history floors take you from the earliest people here to the Troubles, handled with more honesty than you might expect. The Egyptian room holds Takabuti, the mummy of a young woman brought to Belfast in 1834 and unwrapped here in 1835, and the Armada room holds treasure recovered from the 1588 wreck of the Girona off the Antrim coast.
The gardens around it were laid out in 1828 by the Belfast Botanic and Horticultural Society. The Palm House is the reason to walk through them, one of the earliest curvilinear glasshouses anywhere, and the Tropical Ravine beside it is a sunken glasshouse you look down into.
Visitor information
Opening times. Ulster Museum: Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 17:00, closed Monday. The Botanic Gardens are open daily from dawn until dusk. The Palm House and Tropical Ravine keep their own shorter hours.
Guide prices. The museum, the gardens and the Palm House are all free.
Facilities. Wynne and Pym Cafe, shop, cloakroom, toilets, step free access and museum maps in fourteen languages.
Where it is. Stranmillis Road, Botanic Gardens, Belfast BT9 5AB, about twenty minutes on foot from City Hall.
What is nearby. Queen’s University is next door, and the Lisburn Road and Botanic Avenue are both full of places to eat.
Cave Hill and Belfast Castle
Cave Hill is the one that surprises people. It rises to 1,207 feet on the north side of the city and the view from the top takes in Belfast, the docks, the lough and, on a clear day, Scotland. The profile of the hill from the south is the sleeping giant said to have given Jonathan Swift the idea for Gulliver’s Travels while he lived nearby.
Belfast Castle sits on the slope at about 400 feet, built in 1870 for the third Marquess of Donegall in the Scottish Baronial style. It is free to walk into, with a visitor centre, a cafe, a restaurant and gardens, and the walking trails run up the hill from behind it. McArt’s Fort at the summit is about an hour up and back from the castle car park on a decent path.
Look for the nine cats in the castle gardens. There is a superstition that the castle’s luck depends on a white cat, and nine of them are worked into the garden in stone, mosaic and planting. Children spend a happy half hour finding them.
Visitor information
Opening times. Castle reception and shop, Sunday and Monday 9am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday 9am to 9pm. It can close to the public for private events such as weddings. The country park and trails are open access. The Cave Hill Adventurous Playground opens from 7:30am daily, closing with the daylight.
Guide prices. Free, including the car park.
Facilities. Tavern coffee shop, Cellar restaurant, visitor information centre, toilets, adventure playground, car park.
Where it is. Belfast Castle, Antrim Road, Belfast BT15 5GR, about fifteen minutes north of the centre by road.
What is nearby. Belfast Zoo is on the same slope, a couple of minutes further up the Antrim Road.
The Crown Liquor Saloon and the Cathedral Quarter
The Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street is the finest Victorian gin palace left in these islands and it is owned by the National Trust, which is not a sentence you get to write about many pubs. The building dates from 1826 and traded for years as the Railway Tavern. Patrick Flanagan renamed and remodelled it in 1885, bringing in Italian craftsmen who were working on the churches nearby, which is how a pub ended up with that tiling, that stained glass and that ceiling.
Sit in one of the ten snugs, the wooden booths with their own doors and a bell system to call the barman. They were built for privacy in a time when being seen drinking mattered, and they are still the best seats in Belfast.
Ten minutes north is the Cathedral Quarter, the cobbled part of the city around St Anne’s Cathedral. The Duke of York, the Dirty Onion and Kelly’s Cellars are the pubs people come for, and Kelly’s has been there since 1720. This is where the live music is.
Visitor information
Opening times. The Crown serves normal pub hours, generally from late morning until late. The Cathedral Quarter pubs keep their own hours and are busiest Thursday to Sunday.
Guide prices. Free to walk in. You are paying for what you drink and eat.
Facilities. Food served upstairs and down in the Crown. Toilets. The snugs are not step free.
Where it is. The Crown Liquor Saloon, 46 Great Victoria Street, Belfast BT2 7BA, opposite the Europa Hotel and five minutes from City Hall.
What is nearby. The Grand Opera House is next door, and the Cathedral Quarter is a ten minute walk north.
HMS Caroline and the Titanic Quarter
HMS Caroline is a First World War light cruiser berthed in the Alexandra Dock, and she fought at Jutland in 1916. She reopened to visitors after a long closure and is now one of the more unusual things to do in Belfast, because you are walking the actual decks rather than a reconstruction. The engine rooms and the galley are the parts people talk about afterwards.
She sits in the Titanic Quarter along with SS Nomadic and the Titanic Slipways, where the full outline of the hull is marked out on the ground and you can walk it. The Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices, where the ship was designed, and the Thompson Dry Dock and Pump House are all in the same few streets. The two yellow cranes, Samson and Goliath, stand over all of it.
The slipways and the outline cost nothing and are open all the time, which makes them one of the better free things to do in Belfast on a clear evening.
Visitor information
Opening times. HMS Caroline opens Friday to Sunday with eight guided tours through the day from 10am to 3:15pm, and free flow visits during Northern Ireland school holidays. Times change seasonally, so check before you travel.
Guide prices. Adult £9.95, child £7.95, concession over 65 £8.95, under fives and carers free. Group rates for 15 or more.
Facilities. Toilets and a shop on board. The ship