Belfast Public Houses & Art Trail | Walking Tour | 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/23/164

There are ways to see a city, and then there are ways to feel it — to walk its sheughs and laneways with a dram in hand and a story at your ear. On Tuesday 25th October 2023, Belfast Walking Tours did exactly that for a fortunate crowd of festival-goers, leading them on a three-hour trail through the living, breathing heart of Belfast as part of Belfast Whiskey Week's most beloved recurring event: the Public Houses & Art Trail.

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

Larry and Paul — the irreplaceable double act behind Belfast Walking Tours — have the rare gift of making a city feel like it belongs to you. From the noon start, they stitched together Belfast's oldest taverns and its boldest murals into a single, seamless narrative, one that moved between centuries without ever losing the thread. This wasn't a bog-standard guided walk with a whiskey bolted on as an afterthought. The tour was designed from scratch for Belfast Whiskey Week, and that intention showed in every carefully chosen stop, every well-timed anecdote, every moment where the uisce beatha and the duchas of the place arrived together at the same point.

Four drams from the festival's lineup were poured across the afternoon, each one given time to breathe in its surroundings. Sipping whiskey in one of Belfast's oldest surviving pub interiors — timber worn smooth by generations of elbows, light falling through etched glass — gave those drams a context that no tasting room could replicate. The seanchas of Belfast's pub culture, its centuries of civic life and conviviality, was the real backdrop against which each pour was made. It elevated the whiskey. The whiskey elevated the walk.

And then there were the donuts. Oh Donut supplied bespoke creations for the trail, and they landed exactly right — a sweet, playful counterpoint to the oak and grain of the drams, and a reminder that the best food and drink experiences don't take themselves too seriously. The combination of street art discovery, whiskey appreciation, pub history, and sugared dough made for an afternoon that was genuinely hard to categorise, and all the better for it. This is the kind of event that brings in people who wouldn't necessarily call themselves whiskey enthusiasts and sends them home converted.

Belfast's street art scene has matured into something genuinely worth celebrating — large-scale, politically textured, technically accomplished — and the trail made space for it properly, rather than treating the murals as mere scenery between pub stops. The two threads, public art and public houses, turned out to be natural companions: both are expressions of community, both carry the marks of the people who made them, and both reward slow, attentive engagement. Larry and Paul understood this instinctively, and their commentary moved between the two with the ease of people who love the city they're showing you. If you're curious about the wider geography of whiskey and culture across Belfast, our Whiskey Map is a good place to start exploring.

This was the third iteration of the Public Houses & Art Trail at BWW 2023 — earlier sessions had already sold enthusiasm across the Tuesday crowd — and it lost none of its energy in the afternoon slot. If anything, the midday start gave the trail a particular quality: Belfast coming alive around you as the day warmed up, a dram in hand and the craic already well underway. For anyone who missed this session, the earlier runs — the first outing at the festival's open and the second on the same day — speak to just how much demand there was for this one. Sláinte to Larry, Paul, and everyone who walked with them.