Most of what this list holds sits inside Belfast, and much of that inside a few streets. Belfast City Hall fills the middle of Donegall Square, a 1906 Portland stone pile on the old White Linen Hall site, with free guided tours into the marble chambers and the Titanic Memorial Garden outside. The Crown Liquor Saloon is a short walk west on Great Victoria Street, an 1885 gin palace of mosaic and etched glass owned by the National Trust and still working as a pub, with the Europa Hotel across the road. North of the square, the Cathedral Quarter fills a few cobbled blocks around St Anne’s with galleries and bars in old linen warehouses; the leaning Albert Clock stands at Queens Square on the same side of town.
The rest is scattered and needs a car. Crumlin Road Gaol runs tours a mile or so north of the city centre. Ballylumford Dolmen sits in a garden on Islandmagee, a portal tomb 4,000 years old under the power station chimneys. Further up the coast, Layd Church stands ruined in a glen a mile north of Cushendall, MacDonnell burial ground and holestone together; the clifftop path from the village is shut for repairs, so drive. Armoy keeps its round tower stump inland, and its road races each summer.
The Belfast sites work year-round and in rain. The coastal and glen ruins are open ground, better in long evenings than in January.
A glens village holding an 11th-century round tower stump and the memory of the Armoy Armada, whose street circuit still races each summer.
A 4,000-year-old portal tomb standing in a private front garden on Islandmagee, within sight of the power station chimneys behind it.
The city's 1906 civic centrepiece in Donegall Square, with free guided tours through the marble chambers and the Titanic Memorial Garden in the grounds.
24 of 24 shown — tap a pin for the place.
Queens Square, antrim
The Albert Clock leans four feet to the east, its timber piles sunk into reclaimed River Farset marsh and shifting ever since it went up in the 1860s. At 43m it was tall enough for one enterprising sightseer to climb for a bird's-eye view of the Titanic's launch.
Northern Ireland, antrim
Armoy is a small village in the Antrim glens with two claims on your attention: the stump of an 11th-century round tower in the old churchyard, and a road-racing tradition that produced the 'Armoy Armada' – Joey Dunlop and three local riders who took on the world in the late 1970s. The Armoy Road Race still runs a three-mile street circuit each summer.
Ballintoy, antrim
A Grade B+ listed Church of Ireland church on a rise above Ballintoy Harbour, its tower left stubby after an 1894 hurricane carried off the steeple. An 1817 sun-dial on the west wall doubled as a tide clock, and the churchyard holds the north-Antrim families – Stewarts, Fullertons, Stewart-Moores – who shaped this coast.
Islandmagee, antrim
The Ballylumford Dolmen is a portal tomb some 4,000 to 5,000 years old, set in the front garden of a house on the Islandmagee peninsula in County Antrim. Known locally as the Druid's Altar, it stands within sight of the three chimneys of the Ballylumford Power Station – old and new sharing one small stretch of coast.
Belfast, antrim
Belfast City Hall is the city's civic building, opened in 1906 in Portland stone and Baroque Revival style on the old White Linen Hall site in Donegall Square. Entry is free, and free public guided tours take you into the marble-lined chambers; the grounds hold the Titanic Memorial Garden and a growing set of statues.
Ballintoy, antrim
Bendhu is a white art deco house that the Cornish artist Newton Penprase built almost single-handedly between 1936 and 1952, pouring it by hand from buckets of cement into cubes, portholes and cliff stairs above Ballintoy Harbour. It is a private home, admired from the twisting harbour road rather than the inside, and a long-standing landmark on the Causeway Coastal Route.
Ballycastle, antrim
Where the Carey and Shesk rivers meet the sea, Bonamargy Friary is one of Northern Ireland's most complete medieval monastic ruins – an intact cloister, a two-storey gatehouse and the sealed vault of the chieftain Sorley Boy MacDonnell. It's free, open access all year, and ringed by a golf course.
Belfast, antrim
The few cobbled blocks around St Anne's Cathedral hold most of Belfast's galleries, its Michelin-starred restaurants and its busiest pubs. The district that artists and restaurateurs built out of derelict linen warehouses in the early 2000s was laid out as neutral ground after the Good Friday Agreement, and it still hosts the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival each May.
Belfast, antrim
The Crown is Belfast's great surviving gin palace, owned by the National Trust. Behind a tiled facade on Great Victoria Street is an 1885 interior of Italian mosaic, carved wood, etched glass and ten panelled snugs with their own doors and call-bells. It's a working pub, not a museum: entry is free and you pay only for the pint.
Belfast, antrim
Northern Ireland's only surviving Victorian prison, the basalt 'Crum' ran for 150 years before closing in 1996 and reopening as a tour attraction in 2012. Tours take in the tunnel to the courthouse, the wings off The Circle, and the condemned cell where 17 men spent their last nights.
Belfast, antrim
Donegall Square is Belfast's civic centre, the four sides of streets wrapped around the white-sandstone City Hall that opened in 1906. The free guided tour is the thing to do; around the square sit the 1788 Linen Hall Library, a clutch of statues and memorials, and the head of the city's main shopping street.
Belfast, antrim
Once called the world's most-bombed hotel, the Europa took somewhere between 28 and 33 explosions during the Troubles and never closed. Today it's Northern Ireland's largest hotel, with 272 rooms, a live-music piano lounge and a Clinton Suite named for its most famous guest, right beside Belfast's main bus and train stations.
10 Glendun Road, antrim
Glenmona House stands in Cushendun, the Cornish-style village Clough Williams-Ellis designed before he built Portmeirion. The original 1830s lodge was burnt by the IRA in 1922, and Williams-Ellis rebuilt it from the shell by 1923. Now owned by the National Trust and on the Heritage at Risk register, its refurbished rooms are used for community events and open to visitors at weekends.
Belfast, antrim
Harland & Wolff has built ships on Belfast’s Queen’s Island since 1861, the Titanic among more than 1,700 of them. The working yard is closed to the public, but its twin cranes, Samson and Goliath, are visible for miles and the free waterfront promenade runs right alongside the slipways.
Layde Road, antrim
The ruins of Layd Church stand in a steep glen about a mile north of Cushendall on the Antrim coast. A 13th-century Franciscan foundation, it became the chief burial ground of the MacDonnell clan after Bonamargy declined, and the graveyard holds old vaults, coffin-resting stones and a holestone that may pre-date Christianity. The clifftop path from the village is closed for repairs, so reach it by road for now.
Fairhead, antrim
A small lake on the Fair Head plateau above Ballycastle, with a well-preserved stone crannog on an island near its centre – built around a thousand years ago and later fortified by a McDonnell chieftain. A 2.4 km loop circles the shore past two other loughs, and the water is a stocked brown-trout fishery run by the Fair Head Fishing Club.
Belfast, antrim
Charles Lanyon's red-brick Tudor Gothic front of 1849 is the building most people picture when they think of Queen's, modelled loosely on Oxford's Magdalen College. The campus is free to walk, the Naughton Gallery shows contemporary art at no charge, and guided tours run on Mondays and Fridays with the Botanic Gardens and Ulster Museum a few minutes' walk away.
Belfast, antrim
One of the oldest surviving crossings on the River Lagan, Shaw's Bridge carried the Belfast–Dublin road for centuries before a new bridge took the traffic in 1977. It now anchors free walks, cycling and kayaking in the Lagan Valley Regional Park.
Capecastle, antrim
Belfast, antrim
Belfast, antrim
Monument Road, antrim
Magheramorne, antrim
Belfast, antrim
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