Titanic photos

Belfast’s Titanic Quarter is twenty years old. My first experience of it was probably a night at the new Odyssey cinema, back in 2001. The cinema was off an ultra-modern, airy pavilion which you could admire from the comfort of café seats around a coffee cart on the bottom level. After spending most of my…

Belfast’s Titanic Quarter is twenty years old. My first experience of it was probably a night at the new Odyssey cinema, back in 2001. The cinema was off an ultra-modern, airy pavilion which you could admire from the comfort of café seats around a coffee cart on the bottom level. After spending most of my life in Irish provincial towns, the place was thrilling, especially that coffee cart. It disappeared soon after.

The Titanic Quarter has never fulfilled its potential. Like hoverboards and two-day weeks, we’re still waiting for the cosmopolitan, outdoor Belfast we were promised. Perhaps it’s growing on the horizon, like a Stena Line ferry.

But I’m still a fan, and a regular, always happy to emerge from the claustrophobic red brick of the East and come into the Titanic Quarter’s clean grey spaces, see the river and the lough and the sea all in one stretch, and the panorama north over the city and the hills. It’s got big ships too.

Here are some photos I’ve taken over the years.