Art

The Falls Road murals

What to look atGable-end painting on this scale started here during the 1981 hunger strikes and never stopped. The older walls commemorate the dead; the stretch known as the International Wall is given over to causes elsewhere — Palestine, the Basque Country, Cuba — repainted every few months. Read the small text at the bottom of each; that is where the argument is.

These murals are political, and they are the art of one of the two communities here. This page describes them and takes no side. Photograph the walls, not people's houses, and ask before pointing a camera at anyone.

The Shankill Road murals

What to look atThe same craft, a different iconography: King William on his horse, the Somme, the red hand, the men of the district who died. Many of the older paramilitary walls have been painted over since 2010 with sports figures, C. S. Lewis and shipyard history — a slow, deliberate change you can watch happening street by street.

The same applies here as on the Falls: political art, described and not endorsed. Seeing both roads on the same afternoon is the honest way to do it, and local black-taxi drivers from each side will take you.

Edith Joseph

What to look atLavery was born off the Falls Road, orphaned at three, and became the portrait painter of Edwardian London. Look at how little paint is actually on the canvas: a few loaded strokes for the dress, the background barely touched, and a face finished with the precision he saved for the one thing that mattered.

The Big Fish

What to look atA ten-metre salmon covered in ceramic tiles, and every tile is printed with a piece of Belfast: newspaper front pages, old photographs, letters, children's drawings. Inside the fish is a time capsule. It was put up the year after the Good Friday Agreement, on a river that had just been cleaned enough for salmon to return.

The Crown Liquor Saloon

What to look atCarved wood, etched and gilded glass, a tiled floor and ten wooden snugs with their own doors and a bell to call the barman. It was decorated by the Italian craftsmen brought over to work on Belfast's Catholic churches, moonlighting in the evenings — which is why a pub looks like a chapel.

The Harland & Wolff drawing offices

What to look atTwo barrel-vaulted rooms built with enormous arched windows for one reason: draughtsmen needed north light to draw by. The Titanic, the Olympic and the Britannic were drawn on these floors. It is industrial architecture designed entirely around the human eye, which is a kind of art.