Titanic Belfast

The building stands on the Harland and Wolff slipways where the ship was designed, built and launched in 1911, and its four angular aluminium hulls rise to roughly the height of the original bows. Inside, nine galleries work through Belfast's linen and shipbuilding boom, the drawing offices, the riveting and the fitting out, the launch, the voyage and the loss, and finally the wreck located on the sea floor in 1985. The tone is documentary rather than sentimental, and the sections on the shipyard workforce are the strongest part. Outside, the slipways themselves are marked out at full size in the concrete, which conveys the scale better than any gallery does.

What you actually see

• The slipways - the launch site marked out full size in the ground outside.
• The shipyard galleries - riveting, drawing offices and the Belfast trades behind the ship.
• The reconstructed interiors - cabins from steerage to first class, set side by side.
• SS Nomadic - the surviving tender that ferried passengers out, moored nearby.

When to go

Open year-round with timed entry; book online, particularly for summer and cruise-ship days when the morning slots fill. Late afternoon is quietest. Allow two to three hours inside plus time on the slipways. Belfast weather makes this a good wet-day plan, though the outdoor sections need dry conditions to be worth walking.

Honest expectations

It is expensive by the standards of museums in these islands, and there are very few original objects, so the experience is largely audiovisual reconstruction. Crowds bunch at the start and thin later, which makes the first galleries a shuffle. The ride section divides opinion sharply. Anyone hoping for shipyard machinery or recovered artefacts will not find them here.

Nearby

SS Nomadic, the Titanic Quarter waterfront and the Harland and Wolff cranes on the skyline.