Ireland Guide
Belfast
Donegall Square
Address: Donegall Square
Telephone: 028/9027 0456
City Hall dominates Donegall Square and the entire centre of Belfast. Completed in 1906, it's a smug-looking building of bright white Portland stone, quadrangular and squat, and with its turrets, saucer domes, scrolls and pinnacle pots is representative of all the styles absorbed by the British Empire. In front of the building stands an imposing statue of Queen Victoria, the apotheosis of imperialism, her maternal gaze unerringly cast across the rooftops towards the Protestant Shankill area. At her feet, sculpted in bronze, stand proud figures showing the city fathers' world-view: a young scholar, his mother with spinning spool and his father with mallet and boat, the three of them representing "learning, linen and liners", the alliterative bedrock of Belfast's heritage.
The City Hall offers the only opportunity to be shown around one of Belfast's many Neoclassical buildings; guided tours last 45 minutes (at the time of writing City Hall was closed for refurbishment; call to check progress and opening times) and access is through a security entrance at the rear, opposite Linenhall Street. Inside, the main dome, with its (inaccessible) whispering gallery, arches 50m above you. Modelled on St Paul's Cathedral in London, the dome is adorned around its rim with zodiac signs, both painted and in stained-glass windows. On the principal landing is a mural, executed in 1951 by John Luke, celebrating Belfast's now mostly defunct traditional industries – rope-making, shipbuilding, weaving and spinning. The tour also takes in the robing room, where the trick is to ask to try on one of the civic cloaks for a snapshot. The building's highlight is the oak-decorated council chamber, with its hand-carved wainscoting and councillors' pews as well as a visitors' gallery. Council meetings are often stormy, but, in their absence, it's a very urbane scene with a backdrop of portraits of British royalty and aristocracy.