evidence: The Peace Wall – or should I say walls, since there are many of them? – has been in place since the late 1960s, when the Troubles first began. They were intended as temporary structures, but were later made permanent. They run all through Belfast, covering more than 13 miles of the city. The tallest stand more than 40 feet high, and many are lined with barbed wire at top; they looked like massive military barricades. Some have been decorated with murals, but many parts of the wall remain rather unsightly. [...] The Peace Walls separate the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast. In the event of a riot or a bombing, the few gates within the wall are designed to close, ostensibly to protect the people who live nearby. [...] After all, the Peace Walls were erected at the request of the people of Belfast. This was not something imposed upon them unfairly by the government; this was something that the community wanted. Those who live on the borders between the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods note how much safer they feel with the barriers in place (70% of them want to the walls to remain up, though among the rest of Northern Ireland, the walls are much less popular).