Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital city, has emerged from a long-standing troubled past to become a city carved into socio-cultural portions. In this divided city communities are separated through interfaces; geographical, architectural, social, political, cultural, planned and arbitrary in nature. This paper, a result of ongoing research since 2010, examines Belfast’s built environment, buildings and signage in their role as joint authors of the creation of the ‘genius loci’. The research focuses on the culturally rich arterial commuter routes, as they pivot around an architecturally and culturally neutral reimaged city centre. On arterial routes, which still often retain the core Victorian architecture of the city’s industrial past, the image of place is created through a rich mixture of buildings and commercial signage, indicating the relative socio-cultural and economic conditions of people living nearby. The paper provides visual analysis of a symbolic city, imbued with meaning through its many visual representations of culture, history and myth, through visual analysis of arterial routes leading from the city centre to surrounding countryside.