Browse St George's Market, the last surviving Victorian covered market in Belfast, built 1890–1896

Walk the Cupar Way peace wall, one of the longest in Belfast and up to 8 metres high, first built in 1969 after violence on Bombay Street

Add your own message to the mural-covered wall, as thousands of visitors have done

Attend a traditional music session in the Cathedral Quarter, at pubs like the Duke of York or the John Hewitt

Belfast has a Titanic story it tells very well and several others it tells more quietly. St George's is the last Victorian covered market left in the city, built between 1890 and 1896 and still trading. Cupar Way carries one of the longest and best known of the peace walls, up to 8 metres high, first put up in 1969 after the violence on Bombay Street and still standing decades after the ceasefires, covered in messages left by visitors. And the Cathedral Quarter keeps the traditional music going in pubs like the Duke of York and the John Hewitt.

Belfast: Peace Walls, St George's Market and the Cathedral Quarter

Go through the nine galleries of Titanic Belfast, from Boomtown Belfast to the wreck

Stand at the head of the Titanic and Olympic slipways and see how the building's prows line up with them

Go aboard SS Nomadic in Hamilton Dock, the last White Star Line ship in existence

Find the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast

Find the old Harland & Wolff drawing offices, and look across to Samson and Goliath

Titanic Belfast opened in 2012, a hundred years after the ship's maiden voyage, on Queen's Island, the land Harland & Wolff built Olympic, Titanic and Britannic on. The building stands 38 metres high, the height of Titanic's hull, and its prows point straight down the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the Lagan; inside, nine galleries run from Boomtown Belfast, the city as it was in 1909–11, through the building, the launch and the sinking. Around it is the rest of the story: the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast; SS Nomadic, launched on 25 April 1911 to carry passengers out to Olympic and Titanic at Cherbourg, and now the last White Star Line ship in existence; Harland & Wolff's headquarters and drawing offices, a hotel since 2017; and Samson and Goliath, the shipyard's Krupp cranes, put up in 1974 and 1969.

Titanic Belfast: The Slipways Where She Was Built

Walk the tunnel under the Crumlin Road between the gaol and the courthouse

Go into the cells on C Wing and shut yourself in one

See the condemned man's cell and the execution chamber

Look across at the derelict courthouse from the gaol side

Charles Lanyon designed the Crumlin Road Gaol and it was built between 1843 and 1845 at a cost of £60,000. It held prisoners until 1996 and is the only Victorian-era prison left standing in Northern Ireland. The courthouse sits directly opposite, derelict since it closed, and a tunnel runs under the main road between the two so that prisoners could be moved from cell to dock without ever going outside. You walk through it on the tour.

Crumlin Road Gaol: The Tunnel Under the Road

Visit C.S. Lewis Square with the Narnia sculptures

Find 'Little Lea', Lewis's childhood home in Strandtown, where he grew up before his mother's death in 1908

Explore the Holywood Arches area where Lewis played

Visit St. Mark's Church, Dundela, where his grandfather was rector

Photograph the lamp post sculpture in C.S. Lewis Square, one of seven bronze Narnia sculptures unveiled in 2016

C.S. Lewis grew up at Little Lea in Strandtown, in a house with long corridors and too many books, until his mother died in 1908 and his childhood ended — the wardrobe and the grief both went into Narnia. His grandfather was rector at St Mark's, Dundela, and the Holywood Arches were his boyhood ground. C.S. Lewis Square in east Belfast holds a group of bronze Narnia sculptures, including the lamp post, which stands in east Belfast looking exactly as wrong and as right as it does in the book.

C.S. Lewis's Belfast: Little Lea and the Lamp Post

Climb to McArt's Fort on the summit and find the ditch that defended it

Stand on Napoleon's Nose and look down over the whole city and Belfast Lough

Find the caves cut into the basalt face that give the hill its name

Walk up through the grounds of Belfast Castle on the lower slopes

Cave Hill rises 368 metres straight behind Belfast, basalt cliffs and caves along its face, and the cliff at the end of it is called Napoleon's Nose because from the city it looks like a profile lying on its back. On the highest point are the remains of McArt's Fort, an ancient promontory fort defended by the cliff on one side and a ditch on the other. The whole of Belfast, the lough and the Down coast open up beneath you.

Cave Hill: Napoleon's Nose Over Belfast

Walk the Georgian main street of the only royal village in Northern Ireland

Walk up to Hillsborough Fort, built in 1650 to command the Dublin–Carrickfergus road

Walk the lake and the forest park behind the fort

Hillsborough is a planned Georgian village twelve miles from Belfast, named for Sir Moses Hill and laid out around the castle. Hillsborough Castle is the British royal family's official residence in Northern Ireland and the home of the Secretary of State, and in 2021 letters patent granted the village the prefix Royal in recognition of it. Above the village sits Hillsborough Fort, built in 1650 by Arthur Hill to command the road from Dublin to Carrickfergus and later remodelled as a Gothic folly.

Royal Hillsborough: The Georgian Village and the Fort

Walk the formal garden compartments and find the plants that should not survive this far north

Tour the house and find Castlereagh's rooms

Walk down to the shore of Strangford Lough through the estate

Find the Temple of the Winds on the high ground above the lough — it opens on summer Sundays only

Mount Stewart stands on the east shore of Strangford Lough, the Irish seat of the Stewarts, Marquesses of Londonderry — among them the 2nd Marquess, better known as Viscount Castlereagh, who was Britain's Foreign Secretary at the Congress of Vienna. The gardens are the reason to come: the mild Strangford microclimate lets things grow here that have no business surviving in Ireland, and the planting is laid out in a series of formal compartments running down to the lough.

Mount Stewart: Castlereagh's Garden on Strangford

Visit the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre in Tulsk, gateway to a 240-site royal complex, seat of the legendary Connacht queen Medb

Book a guided tour from the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre out to Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats, said in medieval Irish literature to be the dwelling of the Morrígan

Walk the fields around Rathcroghan mound itself, still unexcavated after more than a century of study

Find the cave's Samhain associations explained at the visitor centre, the festival now echoed in modern Halloween

Rathcroghan is the royal complex of Connacht — 240 archaeological sites spread across ordinary Roscommon farmland, with the seat of the legendary queen Medb at the centre of it and the main mound still unexcavated after a century of study. The reason to come is Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats: a natural limestone cave with an early medieval drystone souterrain built over its entrance, its lintels carrying ogham inscriptions, which medieval Irish literature names as the dwelling of the Morrígan and as an entrance to the Otherworld. It was associated with Samhain, the festival that modern Halloween came out of.

Rathcroghan: The Cave of the Cats

Walk a section of the 40km Táin Way from Carlingford, following the waymarked loop into the Cooley Mountains

At Carlingford harbour, find King John's Castle — begun in the late 12th century by Hugh de Lacy and named for King John, who came here in 1210

Climb Slieve Foy (589m) and look down over Carlingford Lough to the Mourne Mountains in County Down

In Carlingford's medieval core, find Taaffe's Castle, an early 16th-century fortified merchant's townhouse on the old quay — trading floor below, living rooms above, and no evidence the Taaffes ever owned it

The Cooley Peninsula in County Louth is Táin Bó Cúailnge country — the Ulster Cycle's Cattle Raid of Cooley. Carlingford, a Norman port town that grew up around the castle Hugh de Lacy began in the late 12th century, sits at the foot of Slieve Foy, the peninsula's highest point at 589m, with the 40km waymarked Táin Way circling the mountains above.