Eighteen days out in and around Belfast that cost nothing at all — a world-class museum, a mountain over the city, a Victorian palm house, the slipway the Titanic was built on, and a market that has been running since 1890.
Belfast is one of the better cities anywhere for a day out that costs nothing — the big museum is free, the big park is free, and so is the mountain. Here are eighteen of them, with what each one is actually like.
The Ulster Museum being free changes everything. It is a genuinely major museum — dinosaurs, an Egyptian mummy, the Armada gold, modern art — and there is no admission charge. Because it costs nothing you can go for forty minutes and leave, which is the single most useful thing about it with small children.
Half of this list is indoors. Belfast rains. The museum, the Palm House, City Hall, the MAC, the Linen Hall Library, the War Memorial Museum and St George's Market all work in weather that would ruin the rest, so there is always a free fallback.
Check opening days, not just opening times. St George's Market only trades Friday to Sunday. The Linen Hall and the War Memorial Museum keep office-ish hours and close at weekends or part of them. A free day out you arrive at on the wrong day is still a wasted trip.
Parking is what will actually cost you. Nearly everything here has free parking except the city centre. If you are doing City Hall, the market and the Cathedral Quarter, get the bus or the train in — Grand Central Station puts you a short walk from all three and saves more than the fare.
Two of these are proper hill walks. Cave Hill and Divis are real uplands with real weather, minutes from the city centre. Boots, a coat and a check of the forecast, and you get the best views in Belfast for nothing.
Free does not mean small. You could fill an entire week from this list without repeating yourself or spending anything beyond lunch and the bus.
1
The Ulster Museum
Botanic Gardens, Belfast · free · indoors
Northern Ireland's national museum, free to walk into, and big enough to spend a day in. Dinosaur skeletons and an Egyptian mummy on the history floors, the gold recovered from the Spanish Armada wreck off the Antrim coast, natural sciences, and a serious modern art collection at the top. It is bright, it is lift-served throughout, and it lends sensory backpacks. The single best thing to do in Belfast on a wet Tuesday, at any age.
2 – 3 hoursFree entryLift to every floor · the best wet-day option in the city
A Victorian public park wrapped around one of the earliest curved-glass glasshouses in the world. The Palm House is the reason to come — you step out of Belfast weather into a hot, dripping, tropical room full of things that have no business growing here — and the Tropical Ravine next to it is a sunken glass-roofed gully you look down into from a balcony. The gardens themselves are flat, wide and easy with a buggy, and the Ulster Museum is inside the same park.
1 – 2 hoursFree entryRight beside the Ulster Museum — do both
People walk past it for years without going in. City Hall runs free guided tours of the marble hall, the council chamber and the great dome, and there is a free permanent exhibition on the city's history in the east wing that is far better than it needs to be. The grounds are a proper park in the middle of the city — lawns, benches and the memorial gardens — and it is where the Christmas market and the lights switch-on happen in November.
The mountain the city sits under, and the best view in Belfast. Walk up through the estate grounds to McArt's Fort, the flat-topped promontory locals call Napoleon's Nose, and the whole city, the lough and the Mournes on a clear day open up below you. Belfast Castle sits on the slope below with free access to its grounds and cat-themed gardens, and there is a good adventure playground for children who will not manage the full climb. Free to walk, free to park.
Half a dayFree · free parkingA real hill walk — boots and a coat
You do not need a ticket to stand where the Titanic was built. The slipways beside the museum are open and free, with the ship's full length marked out on the ground and a life-size plan of the promenade deck laid into the surface — the scale of it is the thing photographs never manage. The Titanic Memorial Garden alternates lawn and timber decking to show the proportion of victims to survivors, which is quietly devastating. The Maritime Mile walk continues along the river past the SS Nomadic and the cranes.
1 – 2 hoursFreeThe museum costs money — this part does not
The last surviving Victorian covered market in Belfast, trading since 1890, and free to walk round. Friday is the variety market with fish and antiques, Saturday is food and craft, Sunday adds music and more local makers — there is usually a live band playing while you walk. You can browse the whole thing without spending anything, and it is completely indoors, which makes it one of the better wet-Saturday options in the city. It only opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
1 – 2 hoursFree to browseFRIDAY TO SUNDAY ONLY — check before you go
A vast public parkland estate with the Parliament Buildings at the top of a straight mile-long avenue lined with lime trees. It is free, the parking is free, and the avenue itself is the draw for families — wide, gently sloping and traffic-free, so children can get properly going on a scooter or a bike. There are woodland paths, a play park and a walled garden off to the sides, and the walk up to the building for the view back over Belfast is worth doing once.
2 hoursFree · free parkingA mile-long avenue — brilliant for scooters and bikes
Eleven miles of flat, surfaced, traffic-free path following the river and the old canal from the middle of Belfast out to Lisburn. You do not have to do all of it — the stretch from Shaw's Bridge is the popular start, and you can walk or cycle as far as suits and turn back. Herons, locks, woodland and the Minnowburn on the way. One of the best free family cycles anywhere in Northern Ireland, and it links up with the Lagan Meadows and Minnowburn walks.
As long as you likeFreeFlat, surfaced, traffic-free the whole way
A nine-kilometre green corridor through east Belfast following the Connswater, the Knock and the Loop rivers, and the reason to bring children is CS Lewis Square — seven bronze sculptures of characters from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, out in the open, free to climb on and photograph. Lewis grew up a few streets away and the whole area is threaded with references to him. Flat, surfaced and easy the whole way.
The city's international rose garden, with tens of thousands of roses across the beds, plus a walled garden, a Japanese garden, meadows and a very good play park. Rose Week in July is when it peaks and the whole thing is at its most extraordinary, but it is worth going any time from June to September. Free, with free parking, and big enough that it never feels busy.
2 hoursFree · free parkingRose Week in July is the peak
The other mountain over Belfast, and the bigger view. The National Trust looks after nearly two thousand acres of open hillside here, and the Ridge Trail is a surfaced path along the top with the city, the lough, the Mournes and on a properly clear day the coast of Scotland laid out below. It is free to walk — non-members pay for the car park. Exposed, so it is all about picking your day rather than your fitness.
2 – 3 hoursFree · parking charge for non-NT membersSurfaced Ridge Trail · exposed and windy
A wildlife reserve in the middle of the harbour, ten minutes from the city centre, and the surprise of this list. There is a lagoon covered in birds — terns in summer, thousands of wintering waders and ducks the rest of the year — watched from a proper heated observation building rather than a cold wooden box. Free to get in, donations welcome, staff and volunteers on hand to tell you what you are looking at, and it works for young children precisely because you are warm and sitting down.
1 – 2 hoursFree entry · donations welcomeHeated hide — birdwatching in the warm
Belfast's contemporary arts centre, and the galleries are free even though the theatre and the shows are not. Three gallery spaces across a striking building of brick, concrete and daylight in the Cathedral Quarter, with exhibitions changing through the year and a good café at the bottom. Worth going in for the building alone, and it is a short, warm, free stop to build into a walk round the Cathedral Quarter's street art and cobbles.
1 hourFree galleriesShows are ticketed — the galleries are not
Donegall Square North, Belfast · free to visit · indoors
The oldest library in Belfast, founded in 1788, and you can walk in off the street and look round for nothing. Creaking floors, a spiral staircase, reading rooms full of daylight and a café upstairs overlooking City Hall. It holds the Northern Ireland Political Collection — an extraordinary archive of the Troubles gathered as it happened — and rotating exhibitions in the entrance gallery. A quiet, warm, very Belfast hour. Entry is free with a suggested £3 donation. It opens Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 5.30pm, and closes at weekends — the one on this list most likely to catch you out.
A small, free museum beside St Anne's Cathedral telling Northern Ireland's Second World War story — the Belfast Blitz, the American troops stationed here, the evacuees, rationing and the home front. It is compact enough to do properly in three-quarters of an hour, which makes it a good add-on rather than a whole outing, and the Blitz material is genuinely affecting because so much of it is local and personal.
45 minutesFree entrySmall and free — good with the Cathedral Quarter
Belfast has a lot of large, old, free public parks and most people only ever use the one nearest them. Ormeau Park is the oldest municipal park in the city, big and green with a good playground. Waterworks Park in the north has two large ponds with swans and a path right round. Victoria Park in the east has an island, a lagoon and planes coming in low over it to the City Airport, which small children find far more exciting than any playground. All free, all with parking.
1 – 2 hours eachFreeOne of these is near you, wherever you are
Two pockets of genuine wild nature inside the city. Bog Meadows in west Belfast is a wetland nature reserve of reedbeds, ponds and meadow beside the M1, with hides, boardwalks and more birds, butterflies and dragonflies than anywhere its size has any right to. Lagan Meadows in the south is grassland and old hedgerow beside the river off the towpath. Both free, both quiet, and both a genuinely different hour from a park.
1 hourFreeProper wild nature, minutes from the motorway
Belfast's political murals and the peace walls are on public streets and free to walk or cycle to. The International Wall on the Falls and the murals along the Shankill are the best-known concentrations, and the gates at Lanark Way between them still close at night. The paid black taxi tours are excellent and the drivers add a great deal, but you are not obliged to take one to see any of it. Worth doing with older children who are learning about it — it is recent history you can stand in front of.
2 hoursFree to walkFree to walk · black taxi tours are paid
Free things to do in Belfast: your questions answered
What can you do in Belfast for free?
A lot. The Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens and the Palm House, Belfast City Hall and its guided tours, Cave Hill and Belfast Castle grounds, the Titanic slipways, St George's Market, Stormont Estate, the Lagan towpath, the Connswater Greenway and CS Lewis Square, Divis and the Black Mountain, RSPB Window on Wildlife, the MAC galleries, the Linen Hall Library, the NI War Memorial Museum and the city parks are all free.
Is the Ulster Museum free?
Yes, entry to the Ulster Museum is free. It is Northern Ireland's national museum with dinosaurs, an Egyptian mummy, the Spanish Armada gold, natural sciences and modern art across several floors, all lift-served, in Botanic Gardens.
Is Belfast City Hall free to visit?
Yes — free to go in, free guided tours of the marble hall, council chamber and dome, and a free permanent exhibition on the city's history. The grounds are a public park.
What free things can you do in Belfast when it rains?
The Ulster Museum, the Palm House at Botanic, City Hall and its exhibition, St George's Market (Friday to Sunday, fully covered), the MAC galleries, the Linen Hall Library, the NI War Memorial Museum, and the heated observation building at RSPB Window on Wildlife.
When is St George's Market open?
Friday, Saturday and Sunday only. Friday is the variety market, Saturday is food and craft, and Sunday adds live music and local makers. It is free to browse and completely indoors.
Are there free things to do in Belfast with kids?
Yes. CS Lewis Square has seven free Narnia sculptures to climb on, Victoria Park has planes landing low overhead, the Ulster Museum has dinosaurs, Cave Hill has an adventure playground, and the Lagan towpath and Stormont avenue are both flat and traffic-free for scooters and bikes.
How much time have you got?
Pick your free day in one line
One rainy hour? The Palm House, the MAC galleries or the NI War Memorial Museum — warm, free, and done in under an hour.
A full wet day? The Ulster Museum, then Botanic Gardens next door, then St George's Market if it is a Friday to Sunday.
A dry day with energy to burn? Cave Hill or Divis for the view, or the Lagan towpath and Stormont avenue for bikes and scooters.
Small children? CS Lewis Square for the Narnia sculptures, Victoria Park for the planes, then a park playground.
