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Its centrepiece is a series of interpretive galleries exploring aspects of the building, design, sinking and legacy of Titanic. The interior of the eight-storey building provides 12,000 square metres (130,000 sq ft) of space. View looking down into the atrium of Titanic Belfast The tourist attraction has also welcomed many famous visitors including Queen Elizabeth II and the man who discovered the Titanic, Robert Ballard.
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Titanic Belfast has been credited for helping to transform tourism in Northern Ireland for the better over the past few years. The Titanic visitor centre has received fifteen awards since its opening in 2012. It was the second-most visited tourist attraction in Northern Ireland in 2019 with over 800,000 visitors. Titanic Belfast had a record-breaking year in 2017/18 with 841,563 people visiting the tourist attraction and the year before saw the Titanic Museum take home the World's Leading Tourism Attraction Award at the World Travel Awards (2016) In the same year, Titanic Belfast saw 84% of its visitors coming from outside Northern Ireland. The attraction has also sold 1,376 bottles of champagne and hosted over 350 conferences. Tourism įirst year visitor numbers significantly exceeded projections, with 807,340 visitors passing through its doors, of which 471,702 were from outside Northern Ireland, according to Titanic Belfast. It forms part of the Titanic–related heritage sites in Titanic Quarter, including the disused headquarters and drawing offices of Harland & Wolff, the SS Nomadic – the last surviving White Star Line ship – and Hamilton Dock, Titanic 's Dock and Pump house and the Titanic and Olympic slipways. It is intended to serve a similar transformational function to that of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, as a focus for the regeneration of the city. The building, now known as Titanic Belfast, was expected to attract 425,000 visitors annually, of whom between 130,000 and 165,000 would come from outside Northern Ireland. The task of creating the visitor attraction was taken on by Harcourt Developments, who enlisted the help of the American architect Eric Kuhne and British exhibition designers Event Communications.
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Additional funding was pledged by Belfast City Council. Northern Ireland's Tourism Minister, Arlene Foster, announced that the Northern Ireland Executive would provide 50 per cent of the attraction's funding through the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, with the remaining 50 per cent coming from the private sector, in the shape of Titanic Quarter Ltd, a sister company of Harcourt Developments, and the Belfast Harbour Commissioners. In June 2008, details of a project – known then as the " Titanic Signature Project" – were announced. Among ideas considered were reconstructing the massive Arrol Gantry in which Titanic and Olympic were constructed, or building an illuminated wire frame outline of Titanic in the dock in which she was fitted out. Ī number of ideas were put forward for the attraction. In 2005, plans were announced to build a museum dedicated to Titanic to attract tourists to the area, with the aim of completing it by 2012 to mark the centenary of Titanic 's maiden voyage and sinking.
#TITANIC AND OLYMPIC SLIPWAYS PLUS#
The redevelopment plans included houses, hotels and entertainment amenities plus a maritime heritage museum and science centre. Development rights over 185 acres was subsequently bought by Harcourt Developments at a cost of £47 million, with 23 more acres set aside for a science park. The derelict land was renamed the " Titanic Quarter" in 2001 and was earmarked for regeneration. A number of heritage features were given listed status, including the Olympic and Titanic slipways and graving docks, as well as the iconic Samson and Goliath cranes. Most of the disused structures on the island were demolished. The decline of shipbuilding in Belfast left much of the area derelict. It was used for many years by the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, who built huge slipways and graving docks to accommodate the simultaneous construction of the Olympic and Titanic. The building is located on Queen's Island, an area of land at the entrance of Belfast Lough which was reclaimed from the water in the mid-19th century. Titanic Belfast seen in context from the front