The most authentic experience for Titanic enthusiasts
With the Titanic Experience fresh from a multimillion-pound makeover, April Hutchinson finds a hotel with a historic footprint nearby that amplifies the visit
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.
Flooded with natural light to help the naval architects in their drawings, the one I peer down into is the social heart of the hotel, with walls adorned with artworks and photography – there are around 500 pieces across the hotel. Artefacts are everywhere, including the most recent addition in the Drawing Office Bar, an original clock from SS Carpathia, the first ship to reach Titanic survivors.
FASCINATING TOUR
Over at Titanic Experience, the £4.5 million renovation includes four new galleries; an illuminated 7.6-metre-long scale model of Titanic; and a new artefact collection including the original keys to the ship’s binocular box.
They were missing at the time of the sinking and, without the binoculars, the vision of the lookout was limited – had he had the keys, they would have seen the fatal iceberg soon enough to help the ship get out of the way. A chilling addition to a fascinating experience.
Book it: Stays start from £159 per room mid-week, with a complete Titanic Experience including breakfast and two tickets to Titanic Belfast from £209 per room. titanichotelbelfast.com
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Place of registration: England and Wales.
Company number 08723341.
Registered address: 6th Floor, 2 London Wall Place, London EC2Y 5AU
