SITUATED on the corner of Union Street and Kent Street, the Sunflower bar is in many ways a relic of a forgotten time in Belfast when hundreds of small corner pubs prospered.
While the current incarnation opened in 2012, there has been a pub open on the site since the late 1800s.
Previously known as The Tavern, named after a bar in Unity flats until its demolition in the 1980s, the Sunflower was also named after another demolished bar once found on Corporation Street.
Some older customers still remember the site as The Avenue.
The green security gate that remains outside today is the pub’s calling card, but serves as a reminder of the dangerous days of the Troubles.
Attacked on several occasions, a car bomb exploded outside the pub in 1973 and three people were killed and ten injured when loyalists sprayed the bar with gunfire in 1988.
In 2013, there was also further disorder when windows at the bar were smashed during the union flag protests.
As well as a thriving music and comedy venue, the upstairs bar also served as the setting for a key scene in the 2013 biopic of Terri Hooley - Good Vibrations - where bemused paramilitaries are bought off with the promise of free vinyl records.
Facing the threat of demolition in 2015, the Save the Sunflower campaign managed to keep the wolf from the door and unintentionally led to the opening of the American Bar in Sailortown.
With founder Pedro Donald now stepping away for a new life in Holland, the bar will now enter a new era under the ownership of the Sunflower’s managers.
