Belfast, the city, and it's City Hall

The day was decent, just overcast as usual.  All of the ISA students meet with Paul after classes to walk down to City Center to take a tour of Belfast City Hall.  Kelsey, one of the students, befriended a city council member, Colin Keenan (Colin's Council Profile), in one of their shared classes.  Colin set us up on a tour of City Hall.  The tour guide was very informative, giving us all of the history of the different parts of the immense building and the city that it was built for.  I'll try to give some of the great information he shared along with these pictures.

Before getting into the actual tour and pictures, I'll give a summary of Belfast itself.  For many centuries, Belfast was a small settlement.  Everything changed in 1613, when a Royal charter gave Belfast town status. It expanded rapidly, becoming an important port and manufacturing center.  By the end of the 19th century, Belfast had outgrown its status as a town and was a major industrial powerhouse, known for its shipbuilding, ropemaking, engineering, tobacco, and textile industries. In 1888, Queen Victoria gave Belfast the title of city and it was generally agreed that a new city hall was needed to reflect this change in status. 

The coat of arms of Belfast, which can be seen in several of the following photographs, originated in 30 June 1890 when the Ulster King of Arms made a Grant of Arms to the new city of Belfast. The meaning of many of the symbols within the coat of arms is unknown these days. However, images such as the bell, the seahorse, the ship and the chained wolf were all used by 17th century Belfast merchants on their signs and coinage. The seahorse, which is used twice, shows the maritime importance of Belfast, as does the ship at the base of the shield.

Now on to the tour. Upon first entering City Hall and looking up, you see into the huge main dome of City Hall.  The metal chandelier, that you can just see in the picture, is about the size of a small car. Under this, we started off on our tour.  On the ground floor, we were shown several artifacts, and given information about some of the city's history.  Quickly, however, the tour moved to and up the great staircase, seen here with the coat of arms of Belfast. The tour guide told us all about this and more a lot of the basic information about the building of City Hall.

          On the next floor, we were shown around the balcony below the main dome that you can see in the picture above. We were shown several more artifacts, and we continued on to the Council Chamber. This is where the City Council--made up of 51 members--meets on the first working day of each month.  At the beginning of February, we were able to attend one of these meetings, thanks again to Colin. We listened to them debate many different topics from the visitor section up in a balcony overlooking the Council Chamber. Seeing the how the different parties interacted was interesting, and it reminded me a lot of the meetings such as this that I have attended back in the US. See all that beautiful wood work? The same craftsmen that worked to create the insides of the Titanic did this, so looking at this room gives a taste of the inside of the Titanic. To the left is a picture of yours truly in the Lord Mayor's chair. I'd make a pretty good Lord Mayor, don't you think?

After seeing the Council Chamber, and several other pretty fantastic rooms, we came to the Great Hall.  During World War II, this room was completely obliterated by a German air strike on 4-5th May 1941.  After the war was over, the room was completely redone to the exact look as it was before.  Luckily, the city was smart enough to remove the stained glass windows before the war affected the city.  So here is the Great Hall in all of it's glory (at least as much as my phone can show)!

After the tour, Colin was nice enough to take us to his party's chambers for tea.  We talked about everything from school to politics to just everyday life.  We all really enjoyed our time here, and went home with a lot of great new information about this city that we have become a part of and will continue to embrace during our semester here.  Upon leaving City Hall after our great visit, Colin gave us a going away gift! We each got a City Council pen and a book all about the City Hall. This book has a lot of useful and interesting information; it even helped me write this post.  If you want to know anything else, just ask and I can look it up!