Explorer Belfast

Belfast City Hall is the seat of Belfast City Council on Donegall Square, built in Portland stone to designs by Alfred Brumwell Thomas and opened in 1906. The Baroque Revival building has a 53-metre copper dome, marble halls and stained-glass windows. A visitor exhibition covers the city's history, and the grounds hold the Titanic Memorial and the Cenotaph.

The Albert Memorial Clock is a sandstone clock tower in Queen's Square, Belfast, built between 1865 and 1869 to designs by W. J. Barre as a memorial to Prince Albert. It is 113 feet high, has a statue of the prince on its west side, and leans visibly because it stands on wooden piles in marshy reclaimed land.

St Anne's Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral on Donegall Street in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter, built in Romanesque style from 1899 to designs by Thomas Drew and completed in stages until 1981. It holds the tomb of Edward Carson, mosaics of Saint Patrick, and the 40-metre steel Spire of Hope added in 2007.

Crumlin Road Gaol is a Victorian prison in north Belfast, designed by Sir Charles Lanyon and built of black basalt between 1843 and 1845, with four wings radiating from a central hall known as the Circle. It held prisoners until 1996. Self-guided tours lead through C-Wing, the holding cells, the tunnel to the courthouse opposite and the condemned cell.

SS Nomadic is a steam tender built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast and launched in 1911 to carry passengers and mail at Cherbourg between the quay and the liners Olympic and Titanic, which were too large to dock there. Designed by Thomas Andrews, she is the last surviving White Star Line ship. Restored, she rests in Hamilton Dock, where visitors walk her decks.

Botanic Gardens is a 28-acre public park in south Belfast, laid out in 1828 as a private botanic garden and run as a public park since 1895. Its Palm House, built from 1839 to designs by Charles Lanyon with ironwork by Richard Turner, is an early curvilinear cast-iron glasshouse; the Tropical Ravine of 1889 stands nearby.

The Ulster Museum stands in Belfast's Botanic Gardens and is the largest museum in Northern Ireland. It moved here in 1929 into a building by James Cumming Wynne, extended in 1972 in a Brutalist style by Francis Pym. Its collections cover art, archaeology, local history and natural sciences, with treasures from the Armada ship Girona and the Egyptian mummy Takabuti.

Titanic Belfast is a museum on the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast's Titanic Quarter, beside the slipways where RMS Titanic was built. Opened in 2012, the eight-storey building by Eric Kuhne and Todd Architects is clad in 3,000 silver aluminium shards. Its galleries cover the city's shipbuilding, Titanic's construction, maiden voyage and sinking, and the wreck.

HMS Caroline is a Royal Navy light cruiser completed in 1914 and the last ship from the 1916 Battle of Jutland still afloat. She spent decades as a Royal Naval Reserve training ship in Belfast and has been a museum ship in Alexandra Dock, in the Titanic Quarter, since 2016. Guided tours lead to the bridge, the captain's cabin and the mess decks.

Belfast Castle is a Scottish baronial mansion on the slopes of Cave Hill in north Belfast, about 120 metres above sea level, built from 1867 to 1870 for the 3rd Marquess of Donegall to designs by John Lanyon. Given to the city in 1934, it houses a coffee shop and the Cave Hill visitor centre, and its gardens look out over Belfast Lough.