Belfast Cathedral Quarter

Summary

Belfast’s Victorian commercial and warehouse district around St Anne’s Cathedral — linen merchant warehouses, the Black Box venue, Custom House Square, and the dense Victorian street fabric of the former commercial core.

About this location

The Cathedral Quarter occupies a grid of Victorian streets in the north of Belfast city centre, between the city hall and the Docks. The area was the heart of Belfast’s Victorian commercial and linen trade — large brick warehouses, counting houses, and the offices of the linen and shipping trades. St Anne’s Church of Ireland Cathedral (begun 1899, not completed until 1981) gives the quarter its name.

Custom House Square is a public open space facing the Custom House (1857, Venetian Renaissance, now a visitor attraction), with the River Lagan beyond. The streets around the square — Waring Street, Victoria Street, Ann Street — have surviving Victorian commercial and banking architecture. The Black Box is an arts and music venue in the former Waring Street commercial buildings.

For productions, the Cathedral Quarter gives a Victorian Belfast commercial environment — brick, linen-warehouse scale, and the specific northern Irish quality of Victorian commercial buildings. The area has been used extensively by productions filming in Belfast for Game of Thrones and other productions. Belfast City Council handles filming permits.