On the (Bel)fast track

The way the pop world glitterati swooned over Belfast last month for the annual MTV Music Awards, you would swear the city had just been discovered, in much the same way the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory trumpeted "Water on Mars. Next step life."

Yep, there's music in Belfast. Shussh: Keep it a secret. Some of the best "British" acts are from Northern Ireland.

Thirty years ago, music producer Terri Hooley was kicking up hell in the city, having discovered Fergal Sharkey and the Undertones. Stiff Little Fingers were the political answer to the Sex Pistols, while Van Morrison cut his teeth — and his reputation for being a grumpy little person — in the city's pubs and clubs.

So as the city hosted Coldplay, Lady Gaga, LMFAO, Bruno Mars and Justin Bieber — with Selena Gomez as host — home town boys Snow Patrol were giving a free concert at Belfast City Hall. Oh yeah, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were playing to 15,000 at the Ulster Hall at the same time.

A troubled past

So all told, not bad for a city that is still coming to grips with its troubled past. For all of the wrong reasons, Belfast has made headlines. For more than three decades, like Northern Ireland itself, Belfast was bitterly divided between largely Catholic Republicans who believed the British-ruled territory belonged to the Republic of Ireland to the south, and mostly Protestant Loyalists who believed it was and is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

And more than 3,000 died during the dark days, with 10,000 more injured.

But those days are gone for more than 12 years with the signing of peace accords. The city is moving forward, looking to the future. But also remembering its past. At its height, the shipbuilding complex of Harland and Wolff employed more than 35,000 workers in trades from riveters to shipwrights, rope makers, riggers, plate maters, boiler makers — anything and everything to make it the largest yards of its kind in the British empire. And that's in a city of 250,000 people.

But the most famous ship to roll off its slipways was the Titanic. The ship was so big, a new drydock had to be built — using technology so innovative at the time that it would be equivalent to the scope of the Airbus A380 project today.

When the RMS Titanic sailed away from Belfast on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, she was hailed as "the new wonder of the world". A remarkable feat of Edwardian engineering and craftsmanship, she was the largest and most luxuriously appointed ship ever seen, and despite her tragic sinking she remains a source of enduring pride in the city she was built.

Recreating memories

Come April, the city will be celebrating everything Titanic — and the centrepiece will be a new interpretative centre that will feature the latest technology to bring the liner alive. The project has cost close to £95 million (Dh546 million) so far, and even features a reconstruction of the centre staircase and dining room on the ship. The building is shaped like the three ships — the Titanic, Britannic and Oceanic — in the series ordered by the White Star Line for fast and luxurious transatlantic service to compete with Cunard's Mauritania and Lusitania. It's also the exact dimension of the bow of the vessel — and when you stand beside it, gives an imposing sense of just how big the Titanic was. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew on-board died when the Titanic sank three hours after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

In an effort to move from the divisions of the past that tore this city apart, new "cultural" quarters have been established, identifying Belfast's districts with the industries and historical neighbourhoods — the Titanic Quarter around the shipyards, the Linen Quarter around the area closely linked to flax processing and linen production, the Gaeltacht Quarter and the Cathedral Quarter.

Two giant shipyard cranes, known as David and Goliath, stand over the city. Now, only 150 workers are employed by Harland and Wolff, with oil-rig services and wind turbines being the main focus of activity. The area, once full of rows and rows of red-bricked Edwardian warehouses, is being transformed through a £7 billion (Dh40 billion) project of arts centres, media production and apartments. Just up from where the Titanic's hull was fitted with boilers and superstructure, a new studio had just wrapped up filming the next season of HBO's Game of Thrones.

Belfast is vibrant, cultured and filled with great restaurants. Its back alleys are full of interesting courtyards where crowds gather at weekends, debating and chatting, and listing to the next generation of promising talent.

Terri Hooley is still there, looking for the next best thing to come out of Belfast. Do yourself a favour, and get over there. It's not so much that Hooley will discover you, but you'll discover a city full of life. Here's to the next 100 years!

Belfast, Ireland

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