Ireland Guide
Belfast
Belfast Castle
Website: www.belfastcastle.co.uk
Opening time: Mon– Sat 9am–10pm, Sun 9am–6pm
Price: Free
Built in 1870 to the designs of Lanyon, the sandstone Belfast Castle and its wooded estate are open to the public. The exterior is in Scottish Baronial style, inspired in part by the reconstruction of Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire in 1853, with a six-storey tower, a series of crow-stepped gables and conically peak-capped turrets. The most striking feature of all, however, is the serpentine Italianate stairway that leads down from the principal reception room to the garden terrace below. Restored and refurbished in 1990, the interior is sadly virtually empty of Victorian period accoutrements, but upstairs the revamped visitor centre traces the locality's history from prehistoric cave-dwellers to the castle's construction.