BELFAST
& DISTRICT
THE ODYSSEY COMPLEX BY THE RIVER LAGAN
PROVIDES A POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE.
Adjacent
is the Great Victoria Street Mall on the site of the famous railway
station of the same name although today the new and much smaller railway
station is accessed via the mall. Close by is The Spires shopping
mall more noted for its impressive baronial facade.
Belfast still retains some of its Victorian narrow lanes or Entrys,
sought after for the saloon bars tucked away within. These narrow alleyways
run between Ann Street (two blocks north east of the City Hall) and
High Street. In Pottinger's Entry is The Morning Star; The Globe
in Joy's Entry and White's Tavern in Winecellar Entry
— the latter being the oldest bar in the city.
A few blocks west, Kelly’s Cellars in Bank Street was a
haunt of radical plotters in the 1798 rebellion.
If you want to investigate the past, The Ulster Historical Foundation,
College Square East, Belfast has a bookshop with a range of titles
covering Irish and local history, genealogy, contempory politics of
society, archaeology and the Irish language.
Donegall Pass is south of the city centre and is an intriguing mix of
motorbikers and antique shops. Nearby in Bradbury Place is another palace,
Lavery’s Gin Palace where university freshers flex their
newly found student grants. Further south in the charming Botanic
Gardens you can gaze at the banana trees in the Tropical Ravine,
on your way to the Ulster Museum with its fine landscape paintings
by Andrew Nichol (1804-1886) and the studies of Belfast’s poor
by William Conor (1881-1968). Even more poignant is a thin gold ring
in the museum’s display of artefacts salvaged from the wreck of
the Girona, part of the decimated Armada, lost off the Giant’s
Causeway. Given by his betrothed, to a Spanish officer, it reads “No
tengo mas que dar te” – “I have nothing more to give
you.”
Adjacent is the Queen’s University with its impressive red
brick mock Tudor facade. The builings are framed by lovely Georgian
terraces around the lawns making the area one of Belfast’s most
pleasing.
At
the heart of the city centre Queen Victoria, in statue, looks north
from the ebullient domed 1906 City Hall with as dramatic an interior
as its impressive exterior. Very much in the heart of Belfast, the City
Hall is without doubt one of the most notable examples of civic centres
throughout the British Isles. In the evening atmospheric lighting gives
the building a presidential image and it provides a dignified focus
for the city centre. Inside is a marbled entrance hall with a superb
staircase and colonnade beneath the 170ft dome and its whispering gallery
modelled on St Paul's Cathedral in London (City Hall Tours are available
free of charge, booking required. Tel: (028) 9032 0202.)
Donegall Square surrounds the City Hall. In the south of the
square look up and the old warehouses are decorated with the sculptured
heads of the famous — Michaelangelo, Homer, Shakespeare and others
on No 10 Donegall Square South.
Lions, dolphins and symbols of the city’s industries adorn the
impressive neo-classical Scottish Provident Building on the western
side of the square.
