Ulster Museum Belfast

The Ulster Museum stands in Belfast's Botanic Gardens and serves as Northern Ireland's national museum, combining collections of art, natural science, and history under one roof since its origins as the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, founded in 1929 and later merged with the Ulster Folk Museum's collecting remit. Its history galleries trace Ulster and the wider island of Ireland from prehistory through the medieval and early modern periods to the present, with holdings that include artefacts recovered from the Spanish Armada wreck Girona, lost off the Antrim coast in 1588. The museum's most discussed gallery, 'The Troubles and Beyond,' addresses the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s through the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and its aftermath, using photographs, artefacts, oral testimony, and objects such as murals and protest material to present multiple perspectives on a still-sensitive period of recent history. Natural science galleries cover geology, wildlife, and an Egyptian mummy collection that has long been a visitor favourite, while the art collection spans Irish and international painting, including works by Irish artists from the 18th century to the present. The building itself underwent a major three-year redevelopment completed in 2009, adding a modern atrium and reorganising the galleries around a central circulation space. As Northern Ireland's national museum, admission has remained free, funded by National Museums Northern Ireland, making it one of the region's most visited cultural institutions.