Museum · Belfast, Northern Ireland
Ulster Museum
Art, history and natural science beside Belfast’s Botanic Gardens.
The Ulster Museum stands at the edge of Belfast's Botanic Gardens and is the largest museum in Northern Ireland, part of National Museums NI. Its roughly 8,000 square metres of galleries cover fine and applied art, archaeology, local history, world cultures, coins, and the natural sciences, from rocks and fossils to zoology and botany. Admission is free.
The museum opened in its present building in 1929, took the name Ulster Museum in 1962 when it became a national museum, and gained a dramatic Brutalist extension by Francis Pym in 1972, whose concrete cantilevers contrast with the neoclassical original. A major redevelopment reopened the museum in 2009.
Highlights
- Treasures from the Spanish Armada
- Dinosaur and fossil displays including an Edmontosaurus skeleton
- Modern Irish and Ulster art collection
- Free entry, beside Belfast's Botanic Gardens
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