Government Building sights in Belfast
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Parliament House
The dazzling white neoclassical façade of Parliament House at Stormont is one of Belfast's most iconic buildings; in the North, 'Stormont' carries the same connotation as 'Westminster' does in Britain and 'Washington' in the USA - the seat of power. For 40 years, from its completion in 1932 until the introduction of direct rule in 1972, it was the seat of the parliament of Northern Ireland.
More recently, on 8 May 2007, it returned to the forefront of Irish politics when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness - who had been the best of enemies for decades - laughed and smiled as they were sworn in as first minister and deputy first minister respectively.
The building occupies …
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Custom House
South along the river is the elegant Custom House, built by Lanyon in Italianate style between 1854 and 1857; the writer Anthony Trollope once worked in the post office here. On the waterfront side the pediment carries sculpted portrayals of Britannia, Neptune and Mercury. The Custom House steps were once Belfast's equivalent of London's Speakers' Corner, a tradition memorialised in a bronze statue preaching to an invisible crowd.
Looking across the River Lagan from the Custom House, East Belfast is dominated by the huge yellow cranes of the Harland & Wolff shipyards. The modern Queen Elizabeth Bridge crosses the Lagan just to the south, but immediately south again is Que…
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Commercial Building
South of St Anne's Cathedral at the end of Donegall St lies the elegant Georgian 1822 Commercial Building ahead, easily identified by the prominent name of the Northern Whig Printing Company, with a modern bar on the ground floor.
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Royal Courts of Justice
Across Oxford St lie the 1933 neoclassical Royal Courts of Justice, bombed by the IRA in 1990 but now emerging from behind the massive security screens that once concealed them.
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