The Ulster Museum in Belfast was founded in 1821. It began as the Belfast Natural History Society and began exhibiting museums in 1833. Moved to the building where it is now, the latter was designed by James Cumming Wynne in 1929.

It became Ulster Museum only in 1962 and houses an interesting collection of art by modern Irish artists in particular from the region of the country called precisely Ulster.

The collections within the museum, which trace the history of the country, include the Malone Treasure with its 19 polished Neolithic ax heads and collections of modern and ethnographic art.

The scientific section of the Ulster Museum houses important collections of birds, mammals, insects, molluscs, marine invertebrates, flowering plants, Irish algae and lichens, rocks, minerals and fossils. There is also an archive of books and manuscripts relating to Irish natural history.

In the museum you can also see artifacts from Northern Ireland, such as gold jewelery from the Bronze Age, part of the late Roman Coleraine Hoard, the Viking Shanmullagh Hoard and medieval coins in the Armagh City Hoard and Armagh Castle Street Hoard.