PRINCE WILLIAM AND his fiancée Kate Middleton have arrived in Northern Ireland.

Belfast City Hall was the first stop during their visit, and they were accompanied by the NI Secretary of State Owen Paterson. They were greeted by a small crowd waiting outside, some of whom were waving flags.

Police sealed off streets and diverted traffic as part of a huge security operation for the couple’s first visit to Northern Ireland.

At the city hall they were met by Lord Mayor Pat Convery and Dame Mary Peters, a former Olympic pentathlon athletics champion who is now the lord lieutenant of Belfast, BBC News Northern Ireland reports.

The couple arrived in the second car of an eight car cavalcade and had a private meeting with the lord mayor and Belfast City Council chief executive Peter McNaney. They went on to meet the council’s good relations unit, representatives from some of NI’s political parties and the charity ‘Peace Players International’, before being presented with a framed photograph of City Hall and a book on the architectural history of the 105-year old building.

They followed this with some pancake-flipping at an event organised outside the City Hall by the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children.

The couple will go on to a number of other engagements organised for their visit.