Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:54:54 GMT Server: NCSA/1.4.2 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Wed, 02 Oct 1996 16:09:40 GMT Content-length: 3394 The Images of Belfast

The Images of Belfast

This is Belfast City Hall, the pride of the downtown, seen from the north on Donegall Place. A Sunday, the streets of the normally bustling shopping district are bare. The red, white, and blue banners along the road celebrate "French Fortnight," a part of the Belfast Civic Festival.

This is a fragment of the first and largest "peace line" in Belfast. This 20-foot-tall corrugated metal wall (complete with Army observation towers) divides the Protestant neighborhood of the Shankill Road from the Catholic neighborhood of the Falls Road. The photo was taken from the Protestant side of the line. The spires in the distance belong to St. Peter's Cathedral in the Catholic Falls Road area.

Apparently, the people feel safer with these walls separating one group from another. This wall is the most conspicuous in Belfast; there are many smaller peace lines separating smaller Protestant and Catholic enclaves.

Political Art

It's hard to walk fifty feet in a working-class neighborhood in Belfast and not see a politically-themed mural on the side of a building. This is a miniscule sample of what a short walking tour will reveal.

Catholic Murals

This mural, along the Falls Road, expresses two common themes in Catholic areas: resistance to oppression and "time to go."

One of the most pointed murals in the area. It speaks for itself.

This mural was painted the day of the IRA ceasefire. It's not clear in this image, but the top brick says, "Peace."

Protestant murals

"No surrender" is the motto of one of the protestant paramilitary organizations. In the background of this photo, you can see Divis flats in the Falls road area. It's the highrise with the Irish Tricolour hanging on it. The top of the high-rise is a British Army base.

And here he is, Ulster Protestantism's major historical icon and my undergraduate college namesake, King William III. His defeat of Catholic King James II over three centuries ago still carries enormous symbolic weight in the North. You can find his picture all over buildings in Protestant neighborhoods.


Brian K. Dewey <dewey@cs.washington.edu>
Last modified: Wednesday, October 2, 1996