Belfast Public Houses & Art Trail | Belfast Whiskey Week 2023

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 15 Jul 2023
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 5 min
Ref: BWW/23/500

Some events sit you down and pour whiskey at you. This one asked you to lace up your shoes, step out into the Belfast air, and let the city itself do the talking. The Belfast Walking Tours: Belfast's Public Houses & Art Trail was one of the most distinctly Belfast things Belfast Whiskey Week 2023 had to offer — a three-hour wander through centuries of duchas, daubed walls, and drams, guided by the irrepressible Larry and Paul on a crisp Sunday afternoon.

About This Event

A Truly Bespoke Tour; designed for Belfast Whiskey Week. Larry & Paul take you on a trail that allows you to discover the Vibrant Art Work that is Brightening up our City Centre, coupled with the discovery of our oldest taverns and the historic buildings that have been preserved for us to frequent. The Tour provides an insight into our rich Irish Pub culture and lively Street Art scene, while sipping whiskies from the festival and sampling our bespoke Donuts from "Oh Donut". The Craic from these lads alone is worth the ticket price. Timeslot: 12pm-3pm Start Time: 12pm Duration: 3hrs Venue: Multiple Locations Drinks: 4 Drams Type: Walking Tour Walking: Be Prepared to Walk around Belfast. Some of the areas & venues may not be fully accessible, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. Disclaimers Please note that individual dietary requirements are not being catered for with any food at this event. Each Brand/Distillery and Collaborative Partner have agreed to our Min/Max Pour Policy. Please Respect this, and enjoy your festival responsibly. Festival Participants who are deemed to be too inebriated, or are not respecting themselves, will not be permitted into events and venues. ALL Hosts/Ushers/Collaborators and Venue Staff have the right to refuse participants without question and recourse. Please Drink Responsibly. All events are only available to those 18 years old and over. Do not purchase tickets if you are under the age of 18. Be prepared to produce ID if required. Venue staff & ushers may ask you to provide ID when showing your valid tickets. You may be refused enter to events if you can’t prove your age. Some venues may change, if they do, you will be notified. All events are subject to changes out of the control of the festival organisers. Any issues, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. NO Refunds will be given. Please only buy tickets if you are prepared to attend the event. Tickets are transferable. If you are going to transfer tickets please email, marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com

Looking Back

There is a particular kind of knowledge that belongs to people who have walked a city slowly, at every hour, in every weather. Larry and Paul carry that knowledge in their bones. Setting off at noon on Sunday 23rd October, this bespoke tour — designed exclusively for Belfast Whiskey Week — wound its way through the city centre with a dual purpose: to seek out the murals, mosaics, and street art brightening Belfast's gable walls and laneways, and to duck into the oldest and most storied public houses still standing. It was, in the best possible sense, a lesson in how to read a city.

The Irish pub is one of the great cultural institutions of this island — not merely a place to drink, but a place to gather, to argue, to grieve, to celebrate, to pass on seanchas. The taverns visited on this trail weren't chosen for their Instagram potential (though some were undeniably photogenic); they were chosen because they have earned their place in Belfast's story. Stepping into them felt like stepping into a conversation that started long before any of us arrived and will continue long after we've gone. Against that backdrop, the festival drams tasted richer — the uisce beatha felt more at home in a heavy-bottomed glass set on worn timber than it ever could in a purpose-built tasting room.

And then there were the bespoke donuts from Oh Donut. If that sounds like an odd pairing with whiskey on a walking tour, it wasn't. They were generous, properly made, and enormously welcome somewhere around the second hour, when the feet were beginning to register mild protest. Small details like this are what separate a thoughtfully put-together event from a generic night out — the organisers clearly understood that sustenance and spectacle belong together. This tour sat comfortably alongside the other walking experiences in the 2023 programme; if you're curious how it compared, Belfast Hidden Tours: Walking, Whiskies & Whispers offered a different angle on the city's hidden seams, while Irish Whiskey Review: Walking With Marty brought its own deep expertise to the streets.

What made the 12pm–3pm slot work particularly well was the quality of light. Belfast in late October can go either way, but a Sunday afternoon gives the city's street art its best chance — the murals that have slowly, deliberately transformed so many corners of the city centre deserve to be seen properly, not glimpsed in passing. Larry and Paul framed each piece with context, never lecturing, always animating. The craic, as advertised, was very much worth the ticket price. Four drams across three hours is a considered, sensible pour policy — enough to taste and reflect, not so much that the art blurs.

This tour ran across multiple timeslots during BWW2023 — you can see the full set at the earlier Sunday morning session and the Saturday afternoon run — which tells you something about how much demand it attracted. For anyone planning ahead for future festivals, keep an eye on the Whiskey Map for a sense of how Belfast's whiskey landscape and its cultural geography overlap. This is a tír worth exploring on foot, dram in hand, with someone who genuinely loves it.