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

Find Dragonstone and the destroyed throne room

Go through Castle Black and out Beyond the Wall

Find out how a Banbridge linen mill became a Game of Thrones studio

The Linen Mill Studios at Banbridge were converted from a failed linen mill and became one of the filming bases for Game of Thrones. The mill now holds the Game of Thrones Studio Tour, an official HBO-licensed attraction and one of the largest indoor visitor attractions on the island of Ireland, about thirty minutes from Belfast and ninety from Dublin. The sets, props and costumes of the series are laid out to walk through as Winterfell, Castle Black, Beyond the Wall, Dragonstone, King's Landing and the destroyed throne room.

Game of Thrones Studio Tour: The Linen Mill at Banbridge

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

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

Sit in the bird hides on the Lough Neagh shore and count the wildfowl

Walk the trails through reedbed, wet woodland and meadow

Come in winter when the lough is holding its biggest numbers of ducks and swans

Go through the discovery centre and find out why Lough Neagh matters to birds

Oxford Island is not an island — it is a peninsula reaching into the southern shore of Lough Neagh at Lurgan, 282 acres of it, and a National Nature Reserve because of the range of habitats packed into that: reedbed, wet woodland, meadow and open water. Lough Neagh is the largest lake in Ireland and Britain, and in winter it takes enormous numbers of wildfowl. There are bird hides along the shore and a discovery centre.

Oxford Island: The Lough Neagh Nature Reserve

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

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

Walk into the open oval court and stand in the ceremonial space

Find the burial chambers leading off the far end of the court

Work out what an open forecourt says about how these tombs were used

Look up at Benbulbin and the Dartry Mountains from the tomb

Creevykeel sits right beside the N15 at Cliffony and is one of the finest court tombs left in Ireland — a full oval forecourt open to the sky, with burial chambers leading off it, built around five and a half thousand years ago. The court is the point: these were tombs designed with an open ceremonial space at the entrance, so whatever was done here was done in front of people. It is free, unfenced and takes ten minutes off the road.

Creevykeel: One of Ireland's Finest Court Tombs

Walk the length of Curracloe Strand and Ballinesker Beach

Stand where the D-Day landing sequence of Saving Private Ryan was filmed in 1997

Walk the boardwalks through the dune system behind the beach

Swim off the strand and work out why it doubled for Normandy

Ballinesker Beach and Curracloe Strand stood in for Omaha Beach in the opening of Saving Private Ryan — filming began on 27 June 1997 and ran for two months, and the village had to be connected to three-phase electricity to make it possible. The same strand played the Irish beach in Brooklyn. Without the films it is simply a long dune-backed Wexford beach eight kilometres from the town, which is the better reason to go.