On the tour buses of Belfast and Derry, visitors and locals alike learning about their cities and their troubled histories, with the famous murals as visual aids. Fionola Mederdith and Jeananne Craig report.
"I knew at once that Belfast was an awful city," wrote Paul Theroux in the early 1980s. "It had a bad face - mouldering buildings, tough-looking people, a visible smell, too many fences."
But in the post-ceasefire years, Belfast has gradually acquired cachet. Blinking incredulously, the city has found itself to be "cool". Chic bars and boutique hotels are springing up. One of the latest additions, Malmaison Hotel - voted one of the top 60 hotels in the world by Conde Nast Traveler magazine - is decorated with montages of the political murals which came to define Belfast in the global imagination.
The palpable sense of danger which once made Belfast a no-go destination has receded. But there is no doubt that the city's violent past gives tourists a frisson of pleasurable disquiet.
While taxi tours have traditionally provided an introduction to the sights and trouble spots of north and west Belfast, open-top bus tours are proving increasingly popular. Belfast City Sightseeing operates 11 tours daily during the summer, and carried around 30,000 people in the past year.
Passengers huddle up beneath the city's customary leaden skies while tour guides provide a running commentary, full of jokey bonhomie. Presumably intended to put nervous tourists at their ease, the breezy tone sometimes jars. Passing the Royal Hospital on the Falls Road, tour guide Saoirse describes how - during the Troubles - doctors from all over the world came to the hospital to train in dealing with gunshot trauma. "It's nice to be famous for something," she laughs nervously.
Occasionally the violence refuses to stay comfortably in the past. As the tour passes St George's Market, Saoirse is full of praise for its unusual architecture. But several passengers lean forward to photograph Magennis's bar next door, outside which Robert McCartney was murdered last January.
Of course, many find this kind of "Troubles tourism" distasteful, arguing that it glorifies paramilitarism and allows a platform for sectarian propaganda. After all, as Bill Rolston of the University of Ulster pointed out, many of the city's murals resembled "giant pages from a munition dealer's sales catalogue".
But murals displaying explicitly militaristic images are becoming less common. For instance, renowned republican artist Danny Devenny is working on a mural of Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist and advocate of Irish independence. The painting is a response to the sharp increase in racist attacks in the North. Devenny, creator of the famous Bobby Sands mural on the Falls Road, has described his recent work as "a pathway to the future with an angle to the past".
"Murals give you a sense of what community you're in - they give tourists a feel for the culture. They're bright, educational, and they don't symbolise any threat," he says.
"Actually, I was working at the Douglass mural last Sunday and a family came over and asked could they take a picture. People feel comfortable doing that now."
In east Belfast, the decision was recently taken to replace several of the war-like UVF and Red Hand Commando murals with paintings of CS Lewis and George Best. Although the UDA murals at Freedom Corner on the Newtownards Road continue to attract tourists, locals were concerned that the harsh imagery of many nearby murals might deter potential investors.
Anecdotes are told about the history of the conflict in Belfast by tour guides and taxi drivers. But Caomhín MacGiolla Mhin of Coiste, a republican ex-prisoners group which offers political tours to visiting academics, is sceptical about the veracity of these narratives. "There are some bluffers out there. And the bus tours take a very broad-brush approach - there's no sense of the historical context, no explanation for the roots of the conflict," he says.
Coiste works with a loyalist ex-prisoner group in the Shankill area, in an attempt to deliver as many viewpoints as possible. "We try to tell it as it is," MacGiolla Mhin adds.
"I knew at once that Belfast was an awful city," wrote Paul Theroux in the early 1980s. "It had a bad face - mouldering buildings, tough-looking people, a visible smell, too many fences."
But in the post-ceasefire years, Belfast has gradually acquired cachet. Blinking incredulously, the city has found itself to be "cool". Chic bars and boutique hotels are springing up. One of the latest additions, Malmaison Hotel - voted one of the top 60 hotels in the world by Conde Nast Traveler magazine - is decorated with montages of the political murals which came to define Belfast in the global imagination.
The palpable sense of danger which once made Belfast a no-go destination has receded. But there is no doubt that the city's violent past gives tourists a frisson of pleasurable disquiet.
While taxi tours have traditionally provided an introduction to the sights and trouble spots of north and west Belfast, open-top bus tours are proving increasingly popular. Belfast City Sightseeing operates 11 tours daily during the summer, and carried around 30,000 people in the past year.
Passengers huddle up beneath the city's customary leaden skies while tour guides provide a running commentary, full of jokey bonhomie. Presumably intended to put nervous tourists at their ease, the breezy tone sometimes jars. Passing the Royal Hospital on the Falls Road, tour guide Saoirse describes how - during the Troubles - doctors from all over the world came to the hospital to train in dealing with gunshot trauma. "It's nice to be famous for something," she laughs nervously.
Occasionally the violence refuses to stay comfortably in the past. As the tour passes St George's Market, Saoirse is full of praise for its unusual architecture. But several passengers lean forward to photograph Magennis's bar next door, outside which Robert McCartney was murdered last January.
Of course, many find this kind of "Troubles tourism" distasteful, arguing that it glorifies paramilitarism and allows a platform for sectarian propaganda. After all, as Bill Rolston of the University of Ulster pointed out, many of the city's murals resembled "giant pages from a munition dealer's sales catalogue".
But murals displaying explicitly militaristic images are becoming less common. For instance, renowned republican artist Danny Devenny is working on a mural of Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist and advocate of Irish independence. The painting is a response to the sharp increase in racist attacks in the North. Devenny, creator of the famous Bobby Sands mural on the Falls Road, has described his recent work as "a pathway to the future with an angle to the past".
"Murals give you a sense of what community you're in - they give tourists a feel for the culture. They're bright, educational, and they don't symbolise any threat," he says.
"Actually, I was working at the Douglass mural last Sunday and a family came over and asked could they take a picture. People feel comfortable doing that now."
In east Belfast, the decision was recently taken to replace several of the war-like UVF and Red Hand Commando murals with paintings of CS Lewis and George Best. Although the UDA murals at Freedom Corner on the Newtownards Road continue to attract tourists, locals were concerned that the harsh imagery of many nearby murals might deter potential investors.
Anecdotes are told about the history of the conflict in Belfast by tour guides and taxi drivers. But Caomhín MacGiolla Mhin of Coiste, a republican ex-prisoners group which offers political tours to visiting academics, is sceptical about the veracity of these narratives. "There are some bluffers out there. And the bus tours take a very broad-brush approach - there's no sense of the historical context, no explanation for the roots of the conflict," he says.
Coiste works with a loyalist ex-prisoner group in the Shankill area, in an attempt to deliver as many viewpoints as possible. "We try to tell it as it is," MacGiolla Mhin adds.
