Overview
Harland & Wolff spreads over 81 acres of Queen’s Island in Belfast Harbour, where the city meets Belfast Lough. This is not a museum – it is a working ship-repair and fabrication yard, bought by Navantia UK in January 2025 in a deal that kept more than 1,000 jobs across its four sites. You cannot go in. What you can do, for nothing, is walk the promenade that runs alongside the historic slipways, close under the two yellow cranes that have stood over the Belfast skyline for half a century.
If you have one photograph to take here, take it of the cranes from below, near the slipways – there is no better sense of their scale.
The cranes and the docks
The twin gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, are the yard’s signature. Goliath was finished in 1969 and stands 96m; the taller Samson followed in 1974 at 106m. Each spans 140m and can lift 840 tonnes, and together they became a symbol of the city in their own right, long after most people forgot what they were for.
Beneath them lie two of Europe’s largest dry docks, built to take the biggest vessels afloat. Walk the perimeter and you can read the whole span of the place in the stonework: weathered brick slipways from the age of rivets and steam beside the fabrication halls where the work is done now.
A yard that built the Titanic
Harland & Wolff was founded on 11 April 1861 by Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff, and by the early 1900s it was Belfast’s largest employer by a distance, with about 35,000 people on the books at its peak. More than 1,700 vessels have gone down its slipways.
The most famous is the RMS Titanic, one of the Olympic-class liners, launched here on 31 May 1911 after months of fitting-out and millions of hand-driven rivets. The old slipways where she and her sisters were built were later filled in, and shipbuilding on that scale ended, though the yard never fully stopped work. The area’s fortunes turned again with Titanic Belfast, opened in 2012 on the edge of those original slips, which pulled visitors back to a waterfront that had spent decades in decline.
Walking the Maritime Mile
The regenerated waterfront, the Maritime Mile, links the yard to the wider Titanic Quarter along a step-free promenade for walkers and cyclists. Painted outlines on the ground mark where the Titanic and Olympic once stood, and a full-size plan of the liner’s promenade deck is laid out underfoot. The route runs on to the SS Nomadic – the only surviving Harland & Wolff ship – and the quarter’s cafés and shops. On a clear day the views reach across the water to the Belfast Hills.
Practical information
Harland & Wolff is a secure, working industrial site. There is no ticket office and no public entry to the production areas, but the promenade and viewing points around it are open year-round and free.
- Getting there: A short drive from George Best Belfast City Airport. From Belfast city centre, frequent buses stop in the Titanic Quarter, and the Titanic Quarter railway halt is close by.
- Parking: Public parking at the Titanic Belfast car park, with street spaces along Queen’s Quay and disabled bays near the promenade entrance.
- Safety: Stay on the public walkways and respect the barriers. Photography from the promenade is fine; drones are not, without industrial clearance.
- Guided tours: The yard runs none, but independent operators offer Maritime Mile walks covering the shipbuilding history and the 1911 launch. Book ahead in summer.
- Facilities: Cafés, toilets and visitor information are in the Titanic Belfast complex nearby.
For the best of it, come in low morning or late-afternoon light, when the sun catches the cranes and the yard is visibly at work across the water.