Belfast

1   |   2   |   3   |   Itinerary   |   Home

Photo by Robert Lemermeyer

For decades, most visitors to Northern Ireland bypassed Belfast altogether, opting instead for the Giant’s Causeway in the North and other famous monuments, like two of the world’s greatest golf courses. South of Belfast, at Royal County Down, my husband Neal jokes that its ethereal beauty makes painter Thomas Kinkade look like a hack. In the north, Royal Portrush’s barren windswept links hosted the only open championship outside Britain. And the countryside isn’t as bucolic as you might have thought: In the village seaside town of Portrush (population 6,400) we pass the swanky wine bar Ramore and notice that the local newspaper lists properties for sale over £1,000,000. (In Belfast, some real estate values have tripled in the last five years.)

Belfast’s still-ambivalent relationship with the past is visible in its built history. While beautiful centuries-old buildings mark its rise during the Industrial Revolution, they mingle with many woeful 20th-century structures, mostly built following heavy bombing in World War II. The capital has been prone to a defensive, bunker style of building ever since. The armistice has allowed an expanded vocabulary of architectural expression, symbolically in the great swaths of glass covering numerous contemporary live/work developments – a heartening gesture of good faith in the safe new Belfast. “The stability peace has brought to the city feeds a continuing desire for a better quality of built environment and urban planning,” says Sean Rafferty, a Belfast architecture student who recently apprenticed in Calgary.

As a symbol of the city’s current healing process, the new PLACE Built Environment Centre aims to improve the urban environment by serving as a junction box where city residents have a democratic say in local architecture. It’s considered an avant-garde concept and is the only project of its kind in the U.K. The award-winning Batik Building, a contemporary design and furniture shop on the old gasworks site, considers the industrial roots of the area in its understated, bespoke composition. But the Falls Leisure Centre on Falls Road – the first one to be built in Belfast in 20 years – is one of the most tangible effects of the peace dividend so far. By day, it provides homework clubs, craft rooms and even a pool with an adjustable, all-access floor. At night, the building’s translucent glass gives it a lantern-like feel, casting a beacon across the city.

Belfast has been on the brink for much of the last 30 years and today it’s clearly on the brink again – this time, of international superstardom as a destination. It’s still a city where visitors are novel, but not for long. At the tony white-on-white James Street South restaurant (where the Corrs, among other bold-print notables, hang out) I order a Guinness and I’m given a look like I’ve just ordered a Whopper at the French Laundry. After much hue and cry, a sole bottle is dusted off and served in a tall, graceful highball glass. Is this not against Irish law? One local quips, “Well, we don’t like to eat Irish stew every night.”

A decade ago, Belfast’s population was learning to live with each other. Today, they’re learning to live with insurgents from the modern world. That’s a truncated timeline that hasn’t allowed for a lengthy healing process. Yet I have faith that a place that has weathered so much turmoil will find its way through its next incarnation. 

>> Where to Stay, Where to Eat, What to Do

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net

1   |   2   |   3   |   Itinerary   |   Home