Category: Northern Ireland

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Belfast and the “Troubles”

For many tourists visiting Belfast, the main “Troubles”-related activity is those (in)famous Black Taxi Tours – which is exactly what I did on my first trip to the city back in 2012. On my more recent and much longer return trip in April this year I instead chose a walking tour of West Belfast and also did a lot of exploring independently.

A major spot on any “Troubles”-related tour (whether guided or unguided and whether on foot, by taxi or by coach) is the so-called Solidarity Wall (also International Wall). This is actually

Belfast and the Titanic

Belfast is a rare case in terms of tourism. Most of its tourism industry revolves around the two “Big Ts”, that is “the Troubles” (more on that separately later) and the legacy of the RMS Titanic, both catered for by a range of specific individual tourist attractions and activities. It’s not very often that a city’s top tourist attractions all fall within the catchment area of dark tourism. But both

Northern Ireland in 2023

about a month ago I went on a return visit to Northern Ireland (NI). My first visit was back in December 2012, but it was short. I knew lots had changed in the meantime and various new developments warranted inspection from a DT perspective, so a return to this highly intriguing corner of the world was long overdue.

And so on 3 April I set off,

Poll Result & this Day in History

Today’s date features repeatedly in the history annals, and some of that has relevance for dark tourism too.

On this day in 1915, Italy joined the Allies in World War One. While The Somme, Ypres and Verdun on the Western Front are household names in this context, Italy’s contribution to the “Great War” is less well known, at least in the anglophone world. Much of the fighting took place in the mountains, such as on the Isonzo front. Some of this is now in Slovenia and parts of