This is East Belfast

Rich in uneasy contrast, East Belfast’s people once staffed the industrial heyday of the shipyards that dictate its skyline. Still the most staunchly Protestant compass point of a demarcated city, nowadays paramilitary murals rub alongside the unmistakable signs of gentrification as artisan markets, bakeries and craft breweries protrude through its fading working class veneer. An increasingly diverse and popular area in which to live or start a business, this quarter of post-conflict Belfast encapsulates better than any other the city’s tension between history, demographic change, urban decay and renewal.