This European Capital With Hundreds Of Murals Is Home To Some Of The World's Best Street Art

Since graffiti artists in New York and Philadelphia began scribbling stylized signatures on the walls of their cities in the 1960s, street art has become a prominent metagenre in the art world. Once viewed as glorified vandalism, it now serves as a form of creative (and sometimes permanent) public protest and has even reshaped the notoriously condescending art market, with works by Banksy and Jean-Michel Basquiat going for tens of millions of dollars. Cities like Melbourne, Buenos Aires, and Berlin are synonymous with street art. Philly claims to be the mural capital of the world. But Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital city, might be the pick of the bunch: The street art is widespread, politically charged, and evocative of the country's tumultuous past. There have been over 2,000 murals in the city in the last 50 years, 300 are still in good condition.

For anyone born in Belfast in the latter half of the 20th century — myself included — street art meant "politics," which in Northern Ireland equates to religion and identity. From 1968 to 1998 Northern Ireland was embroiled in a bloody civil war known — in that most underplayed, Northern Irish of ways — as "The Troubles." Around 3,700 people were killed and almost 50,000 injured during the decades-long conflict, where exploding car bombs, sectarian shootings, punishment beatings, and a prominent military presence on the streets became the quotidian condition of Northern Irish life. On one side of the divide was a Catholic-Irish paramilitary called the Irish Republican Army (IRA), armed under the stated aim of fighting for a united Ireland. On the opposing side were Protestant-Unionist paramilitaries, including the the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), who were loyal to the British Crown and wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom.

With an eventual peace deal brokered in 1998, the conflict is now decades behind us. But many of the murals born out of those tensions remain sprayed across Belfast's gable walls. Some depict famous hunger strikers or masked gunmen or paramilitary commanders, others draw stirring parallels with current global conflicts. You can visit these murals on Belfast Black Taxi tours, guided by people who lived along the city's political fault lines during the conflict. So-called "Peace Walls," which have stood longer than the Berlin Wall, mark these fault lines, dividing Protestant and Catholic communities even today. Black Taxi tours usually stop on Cupar Way, where there's a famous Peace Wall covered in colorful graffiti. The artwork here is paradoxically less divisive than in other corners of the city — many tourists even add their own messages of peace.

It might seem strange for a society to retain — even celebrate — the signatures of conflict. But painting over these murals would not eradicate the past, and they're also evidence of how far Northern Ireland has come. Belfast is not the city it was 20-plus years ago. The paramilitaries have decommissioned their weapons and lost their influence. Belfast now has a thriving tourism economy, spurred by its UNESCO "City of Music" status and a booming food scene that's given rise to Michelin-starred restaurants. For years, it was home to the world's most popular TV show, with multiple "Game of Thrones" filming locations you can visit nearby. While no crowds and low prices have placed Northern Ireland as a preferable alternative to increasingly expensive South. The post-Troubles street art is indicative of this new-look city.

The bar-filled Cathedral Quarter is a good place to start hunting for street art. The pubs are convivial, the cobblestone streets are lively, and the murals cover everything from abstract art and surrealism to celebrations of Northern Ireland's greatest creative and sporting talents. A similar piece, called "Luminaries and Legends," engulfs a gable wall in East Belfast's C.S. Lewis Square, named after the Belfast-born author of the "Narnia" novels — you'll find bronze sculptures of Aslan, The White Witch, and Mr. Tumnus here. Lewis appears on the mural alongside other famous "Easties," like footballer George Best and musician Van Morrison. There's also a drizzly, neon-suffused Tokyo night view mural by Dan Kitchener in the west of the city, which is equal parts arresting and random.

By some estimates there are more than 7,000 murals in Belfast and new works are constantly being commissioned, many of them probing corners of Northern Irish culture — ethnic diversity or the integration of Protestant and Catholic communities — that the previous crop of murals had yet to explore. Tours are an entertaining and informative way to get a crash course on the history, present, and future of Belfast's street art. The "Art in the Heart" walking tour brings visitors to some of the most expressive and thought-provoking murals around the city center. Seedhead Arts, which runs the annul Hit the North street art festival, offers walking tours every Sunday afternoon. It also has a great mural map on its website.