Heritage

There's a growing phenomenon around the world called 'Living History', where skilled re-enactors bring to life the look, taste, smell and flavour of the past. Living history is what Belfast is about. If you're looking for history that is packaged and ready to sell, history you can only view through a glass, try elsewhere. If you want the real thing and you want to experience it with all your senses, take a walk around Belfast.

Start at the waterfront. A few yards from the Lagan Lookout, you will see water gushing beneath an archway and underneath the city. This is the source of the river Feirste. It's Gaelic name is Beal Feirste or crossing of the sand bank. It's where it all began. A port since the 12c, Belfast's waterside is not only a vital part of the city's personality, it has been an engine of the wealth that created its extraordinary architectural heritage.  It was largely in Victorian times that the great industrialists and entrepreneurs of Belfast - shipbuilders, engineers, linen barons - made their money and left their mark. Their burning pride in their city stands all around you. The City Hall, whose influence radiates outward from the heart of the city, is not just a magnificent piece of Classical Renaissance architecture - it's a statement. 'We are equal', its great marbled halls announce 'to any city in the world'. That pride finds an echo in a hundred such magnificent buildings, red brick and sandstone, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian that spread around the city. Many other strands of Belfast history are within touching distance. Inside the beautifully carved stone and ironwork of St George's Market near the waterfront, a vital artery of city life flourishes again. This recently-restored Victorian masterpiece is the last reminder of the great markets area of Belfast, where, for hundreds of years, the smells of fresh, country produce mingled with the cries and sharp wit of the vendors. They still do. And that's the key to Belfast history - it's alive. From the city's great literary heritage, rekindled at the elegantly-restored Linen Hall library with its priceless collection of books; to living history of a different kind - the buzz that hums around countless, beautifully-preserved city pubs, such as The Crown Liquor Saloon in Great Victoria Street, the world's most exquisite Victorian pub. Whatever its scale, history here still has the power to touch. The great exhibitions at the Ulster Museum reveals the bigger picture of Belfast's heritage but at Culturlann, the Irish arts centre in the Falls Road, and Fernhill House in the Shankill, you get the people's story too. And while you're in the area, join the crowds of tourists queuing to be photographed at those world-famous Troubles icons, the political murals. In Belfast, history is all around you.