In a bright modern building in Botanic Gardens, the Ulster Museum is packed with fascinating treasures in galleries spread over five floors. You could spend hours exploring and there's plenty to keep children entertained, too. Highlights include the Armada room, which contains the spoils of the Spanish galleon Girona, and Takabuti, a 2500-year-old Egyptian mummy unwrapped in Belfast in 1835.
Art Galleries & Nature Zone
Start in the art galleries at the top of the building and spiral down through the levels. Works to look out for include Turner's 1841 Dawn of Christianity (The Flight Into Egypt). There are also several temporary exhibition spaces.
The kid-friendly, interactive Nature Zone on the 2nd floor covers geological time, evolution and natural history; highlights include the Snapshot of an Ancient Sea Floor, a fossilised portion of a 200-million-year-old seabed with jumbled ammonite shells and petrified driftwood.
History Galleries
One gallery displays the Egyptian mummy Takabuti, as well as items buried with her. Another highlight is the Armada Room, which houses treasures recovered from the wreck of the Girona, a Spanish galleon that sank off the north Antrim coast in 1588.
On the ground floor an overview of local history from 1500 onward includes exhibits on the formation of the Society of United Irishmen and the Rebellion of 1798 against British rule in Ireland. Look for a letter from Theobald Wolfe Tone.
The Troubles and Beyond gallery explores Northern Ireland's emergence from years of conflict, representing the nuances of how the period is differently understood and remembered through a diverse range of memorabilia. One evocative item is a bomb disposal robot; such robots were developed in 1972 to allow bombs to be disarmed remotely.
