The city is served by two airports:
George Best Belfast City Airport on the Lough shore and
Belfast International Airport 15 miles (24 kilometres) west of the city. It supports two universities: on the north-side of the city centre,
Ulster University, and on the southside the longer established
Queens University. Since 2021, Belfast has been a
UNESCO designated
City of Music.
Belfast has seen significant
services sector growth, with important contributions from financial technology (
fintech), from tourism and, with facilities in the redeveloped
Harbour Estate, from film. It retains a port with commercial and industrial docks, including a reduced
Harland & Wolff shipyard and aerospace and defence contractors.
Post Brexit, Belfast and Northern Ireland remain, uniquely, within both the British domestic and
European Single trading areas for goods.
Since the
1998 Belfast Agreement, the electoral balance in the once
unionist-controlled city has shifted, albeit with no overall majority, in favour of
Irish nationalists. At the same time, new immigrants are adding to the growing number of residents unwilling to identify with either of the two communal traditions.
Sectarian tensions accompanied the growth of an
Irish Catholic population drawn by mill and factory employment from western districts. Heightened by division over Ireland's future in the
United Kingdom, these twice erupted in periods of sustained violence:
in 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the
six northeast counties retaining the British connection, and over
three decades from the late 1960s during which the
British Army was continually deployed on the streets. A legacy of conflict is the
barrier-reinforced separation of
Protestant and Catholic
working-class districts.
First chartered as an
English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of
Scottish Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with
Ireland's
Anglican establishment contributed to the
rebellion of 1798, and to the
union with
Great Britain in 1800 — later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted
city status in 1888, Belfast was the world's largest centre of
linen manufacture, and by the 1900s her shipyards were building up to a quarter of total
United Kingdom tonnage.
Belfast (
BEL-fast,
-fahst;
[a] from
Irish:
Béal Feirste [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə]ⓘ)
[5][6] is the capital city and principal port of
Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the
River Lagan and connected to the open sea through
Belfast Lough and the
North Channel. It is second to
Dublin as the largest city on the island of
Ireland with a population in 2021 of 345,418
[7] and a
metro area population of 671,559.
[8]About Belfast