Following ‘Game of Thrones’ to Belfast and Beyond

By Mariana Keller and Shayla Harris

Hazel Thompson for The New York Times

Touring 'Game of Thrones': The hit HBO series is drawing fans to Northern Ireland where key scenes from the show are filmed.

The Dark Hedges are not easy to find. You must follow a serpentine road along a bucolic stretch of Northern Ireland, past sheep, and glens and yellow fields of rapeseed until somewhere between the sleepy towns of Ballycastle and Ballymoney — if you keep your eyes peeled and your foot off the gas pedal — you spot a shadowy lane flanked by centuries-old beech trees. These are the Dark Hedges. Their sinewy branches twist toward the sky like the many arms of the Indian goddess Durga. The highest boughs stretch across the lane to the trees on the opposite side, their leaves overlapping, eclipsing the sun. Locals say this place is haunted by a solitary ghost known as the Grey Lady.

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Hazel Thompson for The New York Times

Sheep graze in an area around Cushendun, one of the sites in Northern Ireland where the show is filmed.

But lately she's had company.

"No one ever used to come here," said David McAnirn, a tour guide, on a rare balmy June morning. "Now hundreds come each day."

The reason for the deluge? It was written on the T-shirts of a handful of tourists snapping photos amid the Hedges: "Game of Thrones."

Chronicling a war among dynasties for an Iron Throne in the imaginary land of Westeros, the HBO fantasy series is a cult hit suffused with intrigue, sex and moody landscapes. The latter is making Northern Ireland a magnet for fans who want to visit places like the Dark Hedges, which appear in the premiere of Season 2 when Arya Stark, a noble girl masquerading as a boy, flees in a cart from her enemies. Or Cushendun, the rocky beach where, later in that season, the priestess Melisandre gives birth in a cave to a supernatural assassin.

The Northern Ireland Tourist Board has been enticing viewers to visit these and other splendors with a "Game of Thrones" filming locations guide on its blog ("Explore the real world of Westeros") and promotions for "Game of Thrones" exhibitions last spring at the Ulster Museum and at Titanic Belfast. After all, a film or television series can raise a country's profile. New Zealand has "Lord of the Rings." Sweden has "Wallander" and "Millennium." But the success of "Game of Thrones," which begins filming Season 4 this month in Northern Ireland, is particularly welcome and poignant in the capital, Belfast, which for decades had been synonymous with strife.

More than 3,500 people were killed in the sectarian fighting between British loyalists (mainly Protestants) and Irish nationalists (mostly Roman Catholics) between 1969 and the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998. The rest of the world, including people in other parts of Ireland, stayed away.

"For most of my life I was in a film set," said Mr. McAnirn, who was a teenager in Belfast during those years. "And it was a horror movie."

In the mid-1990s, tourism industry pioneers like Caroline McComb, who along with her husband operates McComb's tours and coaches, were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to convince tourists that there was more to Belfast than the Troubles, as the 30-year period of fighting is known. "New York has its skyline," Ms. McComb said. "Sydney has its opera house. Everybody was deflated and was like, 'What do we have here?' "

These days, a lot. There's the year-old Titanic Belfast museum, which tells the story of how Belfast once built the biggest ship in the world; the recently restored S. S. Nomadic, an original tender ship to the Titanic that transported the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Elizabeth Taylor; and the new visitor center at the Giant's Causeway, a Unesco world heritage site. Belfast has also been courting the world with high-profile events like the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2011, the summit of Group of 8 industrial nations this year and, in 2014, the Giro d'Italia, one of professional cycling's three Grand Tour races.

"It's a real breath of fresh air to be able to look forward instead of back," said Ms. McComb, who recently began proffering a private nine-hour "Game of Thrones" locations tour (about $516 a person), available through Viator.com. "People in Northern Ireland are all so eager to make tourism work for us."

That's not to say the past is buried. This is a country of ghosts. And there are still sporadic clashes. In December, violence erupted for weeks when the Belfast council decided to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, prompting protests from some British loyalists. The fences and walls (some 30 feet tall) that separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods outside the city center remain. And gates that allow passage between the neighborhoods are still sealed at certain hours.

Stephanie Rosenbloom writes the Getaway column for Travel.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 7, 2013

A caption for five pictures on Page 7 this weekend with the continuation of the cover article about Northern Ireland was inadvertently omitted. The photographs include, counterclockwise from top, Fair Head and Murlough Bay, a site that "Game of Thrones" fans often visit; the Titanic Belfast museum; the entrance to the Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden on Bombay Street in Belfast; and shopping in Linenhall Street in front of city hall. To the right of the map, tourists posing for photographs on the throne in the "Game of Thrones" exhibition at Titanic Belfast.

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