Belfast Walking Tours

06/04/2025

Such a lovely morning with Pete & Sharon from California, walking in the footsteps of Pete's grandfather, siblings and other relatives who emigrated to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th Century

We visited all of the recorded addresses where their ancestors lived;

13 Conway Street
8 McQuillan Street
247 & 311 Grosvenor Road
41 Cupar Street
51 Lisburn Road

We visited the beautiful St Peter's Cathedral, were some of Pete's ancestors were baptised. We also had a leisurely walk around Dunville Park which would have been the playground for his 14 year old grandfather and other relatives who lived nearby. Some were weavers and likely worked in Conway Mill (as they at a time lived at 13 Conway Street)

Pete and Sharon are now great grandparents themselves so it was lovely to retrace their family history with them

06/04/2025

05/04/2025

The Belfast Central Library is a landmark building in Belfast’s Victorian cityscape and is one of the few remaining buildings in Belfast still used for its original purpose. It has been serving for over 137 years and was the first free public library in Belfast opened in October 1888 on the same day Belfast graduated from town to city. Libraries were previously referred to as ‘Reading Societies’ or ‘Book Clubs’. The building is a really good example of a public service building at the height of the Victoria age. It reflects the ambitions of a growing city.

The building is French in style, built with Dumfries red sandstone on a black granite base. It is a grade A listed building designed by eminent architect WH Lynn who won the competition of 50 architects.

The interior is distinguished by an iconic Corinthian columned reading room. In its early years, it doubled as the city’s museum and art gallery

The building was damaged during the 1941 Blitz and a nearby bomb in 1976. In 2007 pieces of loose sandstone masonry were found on Kent Street. Safety nets were erected around the facade and a £940,000 refurbishment of the exterior followed. In 1888 it was built for the grand sum of £18,000

Fans of might recognise it as the ‘Central Police HQ’ where Supt Ted Hastings goes to meet the “top brass” to read the “riot act”.

05/04/2025

A young Katie Gilnagh (1897-1971) was just 16 when she emigrated to USA from Ireland, embarking on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic. Katie shares some of her memories of the tragic event in this 1956 interview

On the night of April 14, Katie and other steerage passengers had been enjoying a party in the communal Third Class areas. She and her cabin mates later went to bed and seemingly slept through the collision, when moments later, a man with whom they were acquainted aboard rapped their door, telling them to get up as something was amiss with the ship. The four girls dressed and headed out to the upper decks but found their way to the lifeboats impeded by crew members blocking their way and being determined to keep the steerage passengers in their place.

When they were trying to pass through one barrier, a crew member halted her but the intervention of James Farrell, who threatened the offending man with a punch if he didn't let the women through, perhaps helped save her life and she later referred to Farrell as her guardian angel.

Katie was one of the more fortunate steerage passengers as only 174 of its approximately 710 passengers survived. All first and 2nd class children survived but tragically only 27 out of 79 third class children survived

03/04/2025

This morning's tour around sunny ☀️ Belfast was with the fabulous team from Failte Ireland from all parts of the island. The team were on a familiarisation trip to Belfast and staying in the Bullitt Hotel where we started the tour which we call 'Belfast Highlights'. This tour tells the history of Belfast though it's architecture, historic pubs, street art, monuments and public art and churches. We travelled back in time and walked the oldest streets of the city, the entries and around Cathedral Quarter and the beautiful Maritime Mile finishing at Titanic Museum Attraction in Titanic Quarter

Visit Belfast Cathedral Quarter Belfast

02/04/2025

02/04/2025

Amazing BBC archive footage of Belfast in 1976! Journalist Diane Harron takes Nationwide anchor Micheal Barratt on a trip round Belfast to see a different side of the city. Amid the mayhem she can only see the beauty in the city ♥️

It is business as usual at the
Crown Bar Belfast despite its windows being blown in. Belfast City Hall looking magnificent with its marble halls and rotunda and a look inside the original the Grand Central Hotel which had then become a base for the British Army

Belfast has come a long way from those dark days when Lonely Planet advised travellers of the '4 Bs' to avoid (Beirut, Baghdad, Bosnia & Belfast). Twenty years later they said get to Belfast before the world finds out about it! In 2025 there are over 150 cruise ships due to visit us and other travellers from all over the world

02/04/2025

31/03/2025

This iconic building opened 13 years ago and it has captured the imagination of the world since with its unique design which incorporates many of the incredible features of the Titanic story.

The five points of the ⭐ White Star Line logo ⭐ are incorporated into the design of 'Titanic Belfast'. The fifth point is the glass shard, which is drawn back into the centre, protected by the four hulls that radiate like a compass rose. The shard is pointing down the former slipways between the lines of Olympic and TITANIC. The White Star Line was the shipping company that owned the Olympic Class ocean liners, including the Titanic

The four plated hulls which ring the atrium of the building, clothed in their faceted plates of aluminium are a combination of different elements. Water crystal, iceberg, star and bow

A subtle sweeping map of the Northern hemisphere is picked out in the pavers surrounding this iconic building with markers plotting the course of Titanic's maiden voyage so that visitors can retrace its fateful journey. Cities relevant to the Titanic are identified on the map: Belfast, Southampton, Cherbourg, Cobh (then Queenstown), New York, Halifax

📸 Shout out to Mark Rowan
for amazing ariel photos 👏👏👏

29/03/2025

Happy Mummies Day 😍

This is Takabuti, Belfast's 2600-year-old mummy. She looks great for her age! No botox or filler and still a thriller 😋

Her coffin was swept up in the surge of the Egyptian mummy trade that followed the Napoleonic Wars.

A wealthy Irish man named Thomas Greg, from Holywood, Co Down brought Takabuti’s remains to Belfast in 1834, making her the first Egyptian mummy to arrive in Ireland. She was donated to the museum and her body was unwrapped in 1835.

When Takabuti died her body was mummified (the word comes from the Persian and Arabic words for `wax’ and `bitumen’, muum and mumia. This was a way of preserving the individual’s physical body (Khat) without which the soul could not achieve immortality.

Natron salt, sweet-smelling spices, resins, oils and linen bandages were used to preserve the body. The stomach, intestine, lungs and liver were stored in canopic jars made from clay or stone

Things the person would find useful in the afterlife, such as food, make-up jars, combs, children’s toys, lamps and jewellery would be placed in the burial tomb.

Beside Takabuti is another mummy case. This belongs to Tjesmutperet who was an important woman. She has an inner and outer wooden case and her burial place was at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. But, when she was unwrapped in Belfast in 1850, her body had turned to black dust.

The mummification of was much more successful.

Oh Mummy 😲

26/03/2025

26/03/2025

Belfast Mic Tours you haven't changed a bit ❤️🥾

25/03/2025

Belfast architecture is full of history and many of its buildings have had a fascinating life. This beautiful ‘Art Deco building was once one of the most prestigious department stores in Belfast, 'Sinclairs'

The building’s luxurious Art-Deco façade reflects the rise of consumerism in the 1930s. There are echoes of ‘Egyptomania’ in its design, a trend that began after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. So a very happy MUMMIES DAY to all the lovely mummies out there😍

'Sinclair’s' originally opened in North Street in 1926 in a classical Art-Deco style building with a custard cream ceramic façade, decorated with Greek capitals, keystones of female heads, torches, St Andrew’s crosses and lions.

Sinclair’s acquired the 'Century Public House’ (1880-1930) which was demolished in 1934 and replaced with this striking Pharaoh-like building with its Art-Deco panels and ‘S’ logos and modernistic clock on a zig-zag pediment. A Belfast architect called James Scott designed and incorporated both blocks. The features of the building are beautifully illustrated by (page 2)

Just like Harrods, you could buy almost anything in ‘Sinclairs’, from furniture to fur coats with accessories to wedding dresses. ‘Sinclairs’ was second only in size to the Co-op in nearby York Street (which at one time was the largest department store in Ireland).

As ‘the troubles’ escalated in the early 1970s the main shopping area around Royal Avenue was closed off with a one-mile' ring of steel' (1972-1987) around the central core of the city with security gates and roadblocks. The store closed on 1 September 1972 and the building was sold to a Japanese company for a very modest sum of £60,000.

'Sinclairs' was one of 8 family-owned department stores in Belfast that have all since disappeared - ‘Anderson McAuleys’, ‘Arnotts’ (closed 1974), ‘Robinson & Cleaver’ (c 1984), ‘Brands & Normans’ (closed 1983), ‘Newells’ and 'Robbs'

📸 (page 1)

21/03/2025