On the former Robinson and Cleaver department store building on Donegall Square opposite the City Hall are a series of carved heads set between the 1st and 2nd floor (see red circles).
These images were of leading store patrons, celebrities and public figures popular when the store was constructed in the 1880s and included Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the Emperor and Empress of Germany.[1]
If you look carefully, one head is missing. The missing head is of the Victoria, German Empress and Queen of Prussia as the wife of German Emperor Frederick III.
She was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and was created Princess Royal in 1841 and she became the mother of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.
Her image was hacked off by an angry mob at the outbreak of the Great War by an angry mob in a show of anti-German feeling caused by the British declaration of War on Germany in 1914.[2]
[1] Mark Patton, Central Belfast, A Historical Gazetteer (Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage, 1993), pp.107-108.
[2] Lorenzo Racino & Kathy Curran, Secret Belfast (Versailles, France: Jonglez Publishing), pp.14-15.