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Best known for its republican burials, but its range is far broader. It too opened in 1869 to receive the city's growing Catholic population, and its "poor grounds" hold some 80,000, many of them casualties of the 1919 flu pandemic. There is also a mass grave for casualties of the 1941 Blitz, Commonwealth war graves, and a Priests Row of leading RC clerics. The Republican plot, beneath the Irish tricolour, holds paramilitaries and other activists killed in conflict or dying in jail (including the 1981 hunger strikers), and there's a memorial garden. Other republicans lie in their separate plots around the graveyard. But not necessarily "rest in peace": in March 1988 at the funeral of those shot dead in their attempted bomb attack on Gibraltar, a loyalist attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistol fire. Three mourners were killed and 60 were injured.
Milltown Cemetery is a cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between the Falls Road and the M1 motorway.
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Irish Language Cultural Centre
The hub of Irish language activities in Belfast. It's a cultural centre with visitor information, art, trad music, a cafe and a bookshop. They put on regular Irish language classes, from beginners to advanced.
Eileen Hickey Museum
Museum in a former mill depicting the history of Republicanism in Belfast. Eileen Hickey was a Provisional IRA organiser within Armagh prison and amassed a great collection of artifacts and memorabilia relating to her side of the conflict. This is the half-history where 1200 Catholic civilians died in Belfast during the Troubles. You have to cross the city to the Orange Heritage Centre for the half-history where 600 Protestant civilians died - and both are correct.
Excellent comprehensive museum, covering natural history, archaeology, history including the Irish conflicts, textile and fashions, and a large collection of art. The original neoclassical building was extended in the 1970s in a modern Brutalist style. It's part of the National Museums of Northern Ireland, who also run the Transport and Folk museums at Holywood, and the Ulster American Park at Omagh.
August red-brick Victorian building in Tudor style modelled on Magdalen College Oxford, with extensive grounds. On University Square note the fine Union Theological College: the Northern Ireland Parliament spent its early years here until Stormont was ready in 1932.
Belfast's art house and repertory cinema, and the main venue for the Belfast Film Festival.
Established in 1828 and becoming a public park from 1895, this is an extensive leafy green space, popular with office workers and students from nearby QUB. The Palm House, completed in 1840, is an elegant cast-iron glasshouse by Lanyon and Turner (who went on to build similar glasshouses at Kew, London and Glasnevin, Dublin) with a cool and a tropical section. Near it is the Tropical Ravine House, where visitors walk around a raised balcony observing tropical flora and fauna. There are also extensive lawns, a herbaceous border as long as the Zambezi, a rose garden and woodlands. Presiding over the main entrance is a statue of Lord Kelvin.