Belfast - Titanic Belfast, the world's largest Titanic visitor experience, located on the spot where the famous ship was designed and launched, has been named Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction.
To celebrate here are 15 things you may not know about award-winning attraction:
Titanic Belfast beat off stiff competition from the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin, La Sagrada Familia, Spain, The Eiffel Tower, France, Acropolis, Athens, Buckingham Palace, England, Ribeira do Porto, Portugal, and The Roman Colosseum, Italy to be awarded Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction.
It's not the first time, Titanic Belfast has stolen the top spot from the Eiffel Tower as it was named Europe's Best Tourist Attraction for Groups at the European Group Travel Awards last year.
In four and half years, it has welcomed 3 million visitors from over 145 countries.
It had its busiest day to date this August.
Titanic Belfast is the world's largest Titanic visitor experience.
It is located at the sport where the Titanic was designed and launched - it only took 62 seconds to launch Titanic from the Slipways on 21st May 1911! On the same day, the Olympic, and the tender ships, Nomadic and Traffic left Belfast, drawing over 100 000 spectators and journalists travelling from London and America.
It can hold over 3 547 visitors at any one time, the same number as the capacity of Titanic!
Since opening, it has welcomed Her Majesty The Queen, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Titanic director James Cameron, the discovery of Titanic, Dr Robert Ballard, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and, as well as celebrities including Adele and Michael Bublé, to name a few.
The world-class exhibition, which has been described as 'magnificent and dramatic' by Titanic movie director, James Cameron.
A photo posted by Claire Magowan 🍰 (@frenchforcupcake) on Sep 3, 2016 at 7:17am PDT
The building's overall shape represents the bow of the ship and the hulls are the same height of Titanic from keel to Boat Deck!
From the sky, the building is the shape of a star, which represents the White Star Line connection.
The plaza surrounding the building is actually a map (one of the largest maps of the Northern Hemisphere at 10 000m2) and follows the route of the Titanic from Belfast to South Hampton, Cobh towards its final resting place.
The wooden benches encircling the building and are spaced in Morse code sequence. Moving clockwise around the plaza they read “DE (this is) MGY MGY MGY (Titanic's call sign) CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD” - the distress message that Titanic sent after hitting an iceberg.
Since opening, it has sold 338 000 postcards and over 20 000 Titanic snow globes!
It has also sold over 73 000 Americanos, 65 000 Cappucinos and 60 000 Lattes!
For more information, visit www.titanicbelfast.com.
Adapted from a press release for IOL