Belfast

Queen's Quarter

Belfast's leafy, bookish south side: a Victorian red-brick university, a free museum with an Egyptian mummy and Spanish Armada gold, a 28-acre park with a cast-iron palm house, and a student drinking-and-eating strip running through the middle of it. The one part of Belfast where the visit is a walk rather than a tour.

Who it's for: Anyone who wants a half-day off from the Troubles-and-Titanic itinerary. Museum and garden people. Rainy-day travellers — the Ulster Museum is free and enormous. Film and theatre types (the QFT and the Lyric are both here). Budget eaters: the student population keeps prices genuinely low.

Things to know

  • The Ulster Museum is closed on Mondays (open Tue–Sun 10am–5pm, free). If you have one rainy day and it's a Monday, this plan collapses — check first.
  • The glasshouses shut long before the park does: Palm House 10am–3.30pm (last entry 3.15pm), Tropical Ravine 10am–4pm (last entry 3.45pm). Both free. Do them before lunch.
  • Free guided tours of the Palm House and Tropical Ravine run Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm and Saturday at 11am, per Belfast City Council. Lonely Planet lists a Wednesday 11am slot instead — trust the council's times and turn up a few minutes early.
  • Botanic railway station sits on the edge of the quarter, one stop from Belfast Grand Central; Metro buses 7 and 8 run down Stranmillis and Malone. From City Hall it's a flat 20–25 minute walk down Dublin Road.
  • It's a student neighbourhood, so the calendar is inverted: term time (late Sept–May) is loud and busy, and July–September is quiet, with some places on reduced hours.
  • Kitchens close early by British-city standards. Several of the best places here don't serve lunch at all midweek — Villa Italia opens at 5pm Monday to Thursday, Bo Tree Kitchen shuts between 2.30 and 5.
  • The Holylands (Agincourt, Palestine, Jerusalem and Carmel streets, just east of Botanic Avenue) is dense student let-housing rather than anything to see. It's the flashpoint for St Patrick's Day street drinking every March.
  • Two of the best-value dinners here are BYO or BYOB — Bo Tree Kitchen and Maggie May's — so buy your wine before you sit down.
  • Friar's Bush Graveyard, opposite the museum, is normally locked. It's visitable only on booked tours, not by wandering in.
  • Nothing in this quarter needs a ticket except the cinema and the theatre. The museum, the gardens, the glasshouses and the university campus are all free to walk into.