A historic city pub is reopening following renovations after coming into new ownership
The beloved Belvedere on Sugnall Street, just off Falkner Street in the Georgian Quarter, sits in a Grade II listed building constructed around 1836.
After serving generations of Liverpool's drinkers, The Belvedere had grown "tired and in need of some care and attention" according to businessman Liam Riley, who recently took over.
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Liam told the ECHO : "Everybody's got a memory of 'Once upon a time in the Belve'."
He added: "One of my earliest memories of The Belvedere, I think as is for a lot of people, is including it on some sort of pub crawl, whether that be just generally any point during the year, or particular on those winter-come-Christmas type pub crawls.
"You know, old fashioned pubs with maybe an old fire and you're coming in out of the cold for a drink."
Like pubs across the country, The Belvedere closed during lockdowns, staying shut even after they were allowed to reopen, as its small size made social distancing measures impossible.
Now, after several weeks of revamping, The Belvedere is back open to customers.
Its Grade II listing means the building has architectural significance and can't be significantly transformed.
Luckily, Liam didn't want to completely remodel the place.
He said : "Our focus has been to just breathe a bit of life back into into the place really.
"Everything looks nice and smart and new. New bathrooms, new decorating top to bottom, new seating, new furniture."
Restrictions meant the tile floors in the hallway can't be removed, so Liam has replaced only the broken tiles.
The "classical" bar with shutter windows has been stripped and re-varnished instead of taken out, "not that you would want to take that out".
This hasn't proved too much of a challenge given Liam's main goal of preserving the bar's existing aura.
And that seems to have gone down well with locals who were poking their heads in to see what was happening, worried about the bar's future, he said.
They finally quenched their curiosity with a soft launch on Friday, December 3.
Liam told the ECHO : "Most people were hoping that it wasn't going to change drastically.
"Everybody passed comments, or have done in recent weeks as they've been going by, about how much it needed a facelift and needed a tidy up and a bit of TLC.
"But at the same time, nobody wanted it to change beyond recognition.
"Everybody still wanted it to be The Belvedere."
