Belfast – From Lecture Halls to City Streets

Belfast is a city that rewards both walking and listening. From its historic neighborhoods to its academic spaces, stories unfold in unexpected ways.

Karen Relates: A Black Taxi Tour

When visiting Belfast, unless you already have firsthand knowledge, a black taxi tour is one of the best ways to begin understanding the period known as The Troubles. It gives you context that guidebooks simply cannot and does so through lived experience rather than distant history.

The tour takes you beyond the city centre and into neighborhoods most closely shaped by the conflict. Routes often include the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, where murals line brick walls and tell different sides of the same story.

Tours usually stop at the Peace Walls, where divisions between communities are still very much visible. Nothing about the experience feels like a formal lesson. Instead, history is shared through personal stories and local knowledge, which helps explain how the past continues to shape everyday life in Belfast.

Our driver, Phillip, set us up with a recommendation for a black taxi operator, and we got lucky, as there was one reservation available that day. Shannon and I have countlessly mentioned how great it was to have Phillip as our driver during our trips to Ireland. Having a knowledgeable local driver like Phillip can make a difference you do not fully appreciate until moments like these.

I cannot speak for how all taxi tours operate, but ours felt personal. It was just our small group and the driver, which made the experience feel honest and direct.

As we stopped at murals and memorials, everything felt present and active, not like monuments marking events from centuries ago. These murals are still being cared for, repainted, and protected. They remain meaningful for communities whose lives were shaped by the stories they represent.

Seeing that made me think differently about memory and how fragile peace can feel when the past is still so close. It also reminded me that for many people in Belfast, this is not history they visit, but history they still live alongside.

The tour itself was intense. Even with some reading done beforehand, there was far more I did not know and learned that day. The tour also showed and explained the peace efforts that followed the Good Friday Agreement, reminding visitors that while the scars remain visible, there has also been real work toward reconciliation.

Before we left, our driver stopped at a mural and handed us markers and asked us to sign our names. My signature felt small on such a large wall, but it mattered, a simple act that reminded me how much of Belfast’s story is still being written.

Shannon Relates: Queen’s University Belfast

Like many people, I look back on certain chapters of my life as especially meaningful. My undergraduate years at John Carroll stand out as one of those times. The many formative experiences I had there are what sparked my lasting love for college campuses. No matter what country I am in or time in my life, stepping foot on a campus feels like coming home.

Queen’s University Belfast is a vast campus that sprawls over 100 acres. The city intertwines throughout the space creating a blend of an academic atmosphere with urban surroundings. While the university boasts numerous accolades – such as being ranked among the top 200 universities in the world, these achievements hardly capture the true beauty of the campus. An homage to a hodgepodge of varying architecture, walking around campus will promise views of glass and steel buildings coupled with gothic revival standouts.

Seamus Heaney Center

For me, the most famous association with Queen’s University Belfast is Seamus Heaney. The Irish Poet both attended and taught at the university. I remember stumbling across a small, red plaque that read “Seamus Heaney Centre” and feeling an immediate sense of curiosity.

I soon discovered that it was far more than a simple building, it is a vibrant hub for poetry and creative writing that had welcomed so many creative individuals. I thought about Dr. Ruff and her class, where I read Heaney’s Beowulf for the first time. I was arriving home.

I don’t know what I was expecting upon entering. Tiny rooms with lots of doors and stairs that lead to other rooms awaited me. I caught glimpses of meeting spaces where like-minded people once gathered to share ideas and entertain conversations.

Though the Seamus Heaney Centre has since moved to a new location, this earlier space remains vivid in my memory. And, as always when visiting a new campus, a stop at the university bookstore for a t-shirt was part of the ritual, a small way to carry a piece of the experience home. By the end of the visit, it became clear that Belfast teaches in many ways. Queen’s University offers spaces for reflection, learning, and creativity. Beyond the campus, the Black Taxi Tour brings the city’s history and its people to life, showing that understanding comes not only from books or lectures, but from listening, walking, and witnessing the stories from the streets.