Titanic Quarter

Where it sits. Titanic Quarter occupies Queen's Island, a low, flat tongue of reclaimed land on the eastern side of the River Lagan where it opens into Belfast Lough, a fifteen-minute walk from Belfast city centre across the Lagan Weir footbridge. The ground it stands on is entirely artificial, built up in the nineteenth century from spoil dredged out of the river to make a deep-water channel for shipbuilding. At roughly 75 hectares it is one of the larger urban regeneration sites in Europe, and it is dominated on the skyline by the two yellow Harland and Wolff gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, erected in 1974 and 1969 and standing 106 and 96 metres high.

The story behind it. Harland and Wolff built ships here from 1861 and at its peak employed some 35,000 people. The Olympic-class liners were laid down on the Arrol gantry on this ground: Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. Titanic was launched into the Lagan on 31 May 1911 and fitted out at the deep-water wharf before leaving for Southampton in 1912. The shipyard contracted through the second half of the twentieth century and the land around it fell derelict until redevelopment began in the 2000s. The centrepiece, Titanic Belfast, opened in 2012 for the centenary of the sinking: a 38-metre building of four angular hulls clad in some three thousand individually shaped anodised aluminium panels, set at the head of the very slipways where the ships were built, with the outlines of Olympic and Titanic marked out full size on the ground in front of it.

On screen. The quarter is the production home of Game of Thrones. Titanic Studios, converted in 2007 from the Paint Hall — the vast shed in which sections of ships' hulls were painted, offering four column-free stages of around 1,500 square metres each with unusually high roofs — housed the series' major interior sets from 2010 until filming ended in 2018. The throne room of the Red Keep with the Iron Throne, the great hall of Winterfell, the interiors of Castle Black and of the Night's Watch, the Dragonstone chamber with its carved map table and much of King's Landing were built and shot inside these walls, then matched to the exterior locations across County Antrim, County Down and Fermanagh. The studios are a working facility and are not open to visitors; the sets and props are displayed at the separate Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Banbridge, County Down.

What you actually see today. Titanic Belfast runs a nine-gallery route through the shipyard, the design, the launch, the fit-out, the voyage and the aftermath, including a ride through a reconstruction of the shipyard. Next to it lies SS Nomadic of 1911, the last White Star Line vessel afloat, built here as the tender that ferried first- and second-class passengers out to Titanic at Cherbourg, and now restored in dry dock. A short walk east are the Thompson Dry Dock and Pump House, where Titanic sat for her final fitting; the dock floor is 259 metres long and visitors can walk down into it, which conveys the scale better than any model. The Titanic Slipways are used as an outdoor events space, and HMS Caroline, a 1914 light cruiser and survivor of the Battle of Jutland, is berthed in the Alexandra Dock nearby. The Harland and Wolff drawing offices, where Titanic was designed, have been converted into a hotel, and the two barrel-vaulted drawing rooms with their long north-facing windows are among the most atmospheric interiors in Belfast. The Odyssey complex on the western edge of the island holds the W5 science centre and the SSE Arena, and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland sits alongside.

Getting there and timing. Titanic Quarter has its own railway halt on the Belfast–Bangor line, two minutes from Lanyon Place, and is served by frequent buses and by the Glider network; the walk from the city centre along the Maritime Mile takes about twenty minutes. Cruise ships berth a short distance away. The whole quarter is new-build and level, with lifts, step-free access and accessible toilets throughout the main attractions, making it the most easily navigable major site in the city for wheelchair users. Titanic Belfast is timed-entry and busiest between eleven and two in high summer and on cruise days; early morning and late afternoon are calmer. Boat tours of the Lagan and the harbour run mainly between spring and autumn. Two to three hours covers the main museum, and a full day is easy if the dry dock, Nomadic and HMS Caroline are added.