10 Facts about Belfast City

1. C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia.

2. Belfast’s Albert Clock tower is sinking – it leans by four feet.

3. Singer-songwriter Van Morrison was born here.

4. The famous Harland and Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath. A common mistake people make is to call them David and Goliath while some have been known to refer to them as Samson and Delilah.

5.The Alice Clock, situated on the piazza at Fountain Centre, is the only automaton clock in Ireland.

6.Belfast’s motto is Pro tanto quid retribuamus. It’s translated as “What return shall we make for so much?”

7. Cavehill is believed to have inspired author Jonathan Swift’s sleeping giant in his novel, Gulliver’s Travels. When Swift resided at Lilliput Cottage near the bottom of Belfast’s Limestone Road, he imagined that the Cavehill resembled the shape of a sleeping giant safeguarding the city.

8. With a micro-climate conducive to horticulture, Belfast contains over 3,000 acres of parks, many of them forested.

9. Belfast has the world’s largest dry dock.

10. Opened in 1788, the Linenhall Library is one of Ireland’s oldest Libraries. It houses a large collection of work by writer Robert Burns and more than 20,000 archive items relating to Irish politics and culture.