Overview
Titanic Belfast stands on the exact slipway where the ship was designed, built and launched, and the building rises 38 metres – the height of Titanic’s hull. It opened in March 2012 on the old Harland & Wolff yard, and it works less like a museum than a self-guided walk through the ship’s whole story, from an Edwardian Belfast boomtown to the 1912 disaster and everything the wreck has meant since. One timed ticket covers the main exhibition and the SS Nomadic, the tender ship moored a short walk away.
The building
The building is a deliberate echo of the liner. Designed by Eric Kuhne with Todd Architects, it’s clad in 3,000 silver-anodised aluminium panels – 2,000 of them unique – folded into angular shards that catch the light like water and suggest four ship’s prows rising from the plaza. Inside, the exhibition climbs vertically through a central atrium, with glass escalators running up a jagged void, mirroring the decks of the ship and the industrial rhythm of the yard outside.
The Titanic Experience
The self-guided route runs one way through nine galleries, taking the story in order. It was substantially reworked in 2023 to lean harder into the human stories, the engineering and the safety reforms that followed.
Highlights along the way:
- Boomtown Belfast: recreated early-1900s streets and original Harland & Wolff gates set the scene for a city built on shipbuilding.
- The Shipyard Ride: a cable car carries you around a recreation of the yard, past the scale of the hull under construction.
- The Launch: a life-size outline of the promenade deck is laid in stone on the slipway outside; inside, models and a 360° virtual tour show the fit-out and the interiors.
- The Maiden Voyage and the Sinking: photographs, survivor audio and a wall of replica life-jackets recreate April 1912.
- The Aftermath and Ballard’s Quest: the treaty that now protects the wreck, footage from Robert Ballard’s 1985 discovery, and a glass-floor view over a model of the wreck.
Among the original artefacts are Wallace Hartley’s violin – a gift from his fiancée, played as the ship went down – a third-class passenger’s pocket watch with its hands stopped at 1:37am, the last first-class luncheon menu belonging to passenger Ruth Dodge, and a letter written by Esther Hart and her daughter Eva hours before the ship struck the iceberg.
SS Nomadic
Moored in Hamilton Graving Dock, a few minutes from the main building, the SS Nomadic was built alongside Titanic in 1911 to ferry passengers and luggage out to the great liners. It’s the last White Star Line vessel left in the world, restored to its 1911 look, with a lift to most of its four decks. Access is included in your ticket.
The Discovery Tour
If you’d rather be led, the Discovery Tour is a 60-minute outdoor guided walk from the Titanic Sign at the front of the building, covering the architecture, the shipbuilding and the people behind it, with a roaming headset so you can hear over the wind. It’s a separate ticket from the main Experience.
Practical information
Tickets and pricing
All tickets are timed, released in 10-minute slots, and it’s worth booking online – both to save a few pounds and because peak slots sell out. Prices below are standard; a temporary VAT cut lowers them between 25 June and 1 September 2026.
- Adult (Titanic Experience): £24.95 online / £26.95 walk-up
- Child (5–15): £11.00 online / £13.00 walk-up
- Family: £62.00 online / £68.00 walk-up (two adults and two children, or one adult and up to four children)
- Under 5: free
- Discovery Tour: £20 adult / £13 child online (£22 / £15 walk-up)
- Anytime Ticket (undated entry): £39.95 adult / £25 child online
- White Star Premium Pass: £64 adult / £37 child online
- Late Saver (cheaper off-peak, not July or August): £20 adult, £11 child
45p from every full-price adult ticket goes to the Community Impact Fund, supporting local heritage and social projects.
Getting here
- Address: 1 Olympic Way, Queen’s Road, Titanic Quarter, Belfast BT3 9EP.
- On foot: a 25–30 minute walk from Belfast city centre.
- By train: Titanic Quarter Station is a 15-minute walk via a footbridge.
- By bus: Translink Metro 26/26A/B/C and the Belfast Glider stop outside; Airport Express 600/600A/600B links George Best Belfast City Airport.
- By car: 520 secure underground spaces (24-hour, max height 2.1m), £2.20 for the first hour then £1.20 an hour, with six electric charging points on Level -1. Follow signs from the M1/M2 via the Belfast City Airport (M3) exit.
- By bike: free parking on the West Plaza, with Belfast Bikes docks nearby.
On-site
- Food: the Galley Café does grab-and-go, the Pantry sit-down meals with a kids’ menu, and Hickson’s Point is a 1900s-style bar on the plaza.
- Shop: the Titanic Store in the atrium.
- Guides: handheld multimedia guides (£5) in nine languages plus BSL and a version for visually impaired visitors.
Accessibility
All circulation spaces are fully wheelchair-accessible and the plaza is level. Wheelchairs are available to hire, accessible toilets are on every floor, and a sensory guide (PDF) and ASD support aids are provided. The SS Nomadic has a lift to most decks. Free Wi-Fi covers the whole site.
Nearby
The Maritime Mile runs along the waterfront, linking several heritage sites within walking distance:
- Samson and Goliath: the yellow Harland & Wolff shipyard cranes.
- HMS Caroline: a First World War cruiser and the last survivor of the 1916 Battle of Jutland.
- Titanic Distillers, Thompson Dock: a working distillery in the Edwardian pump house beside the dry dock where Titanic sat before departure.
- Titanic Memorial Garden: at Belfast City Hall, bronze plaques name the 1,512 people lost in 1912.
If you do just one add-on, cross to the SS Nomadic – it’s the only real Titanic-era ship you can stand on, and it’s already in your ticket. Book at least a day or two ahead in summer, and allow two to three hours for the galleries and the Nomadic.