The Belfast’s “Peacelines”. Fourty years of separation among christian communities in Northern Ireland’s capital (1969-2

di Paolo Gheda
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 39 (2012), p. 95

The construction of Belfast walls, mural barriers up to 8 meters also called the “Peacelines”, coincided with the explosion of the Northern Ireland “Troubles” at the beginning of the Seventies, going to physically divide the protestant community from the catholic one. They were erected from the British authorities or also spontaneously from the local communities, as the civil conflict increased, becoming symbol of the Irish sectarianism. Inner to they, it was developed the process of weak communitarian identification, based on the negation of the others mostly founded on religious and cultural coordinates. Key words: Peacelines, troubles, sectarianism, murales, catholic, protestant