The most authentic experience for Titanic enthusiasts

Can you imagine being fined for walking in the wrong corridors of your office? This was what could have befallen forgetful employees walking the salubrious ground floor at the Belfast-based headquarters of Harland & Wolff, the nerve centre of the largest shipyard in the world at the time.

Founded in 1861, the company built arguably the world’s most famous ship, but these days the office buildings are home to Titanic Hotel Belfast, and it’s standing by the original revolving doors that I hear plenty of other historical nuggets. As I tour the hotel, opened in 2017 after years of restoration, I stop off in The Telephone Exchange, a small room where the original messages about Titanic’s sinking would have come in. The walls are now covered in photography of the run-down deserted building prior to the renovation.

Today it has 119 guest rooms and a key public space is the Presentation Room, where I hear how potential clients would have been shown blueprint drawings and wowed with a view out over the Drawing Office below. I’m certainly impressed too – one of two in the hotel, these enormous Drawing Offices would have been the origin point of hundreds of ships, such as the White Star liners Olympic and Britannic and the naval warship HMS Belfast.