[caption id="attachment_67861" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Lady Gaga was overwhelmed in Belfast."]
Belfast hung out its brightest colors on Sunday last as the city held the MTV Europe Music Awards for the first time.
With every hotel room booked well in advance and the city's coffers boosted to the tune of £10 million, a week of music events culminated at the Odyssey Arena where Lady Gaga lifted four prizes and sported just as many outfits.
Teen star Justin Bieber and R&B singer Bruno Mars were the other big winners, receiving two prizes each.
Other winners on the star-studded night were Katy Perry, who received the best live act accolade, Eminem, who won best hip-hop and Linkin Park, who beat Coldplay to take home best rock.
Lady Gaga said she was over-whelmed by her haul of trophies.
"I never anticipate or perceive that anything will come easily to me," she said.
"It's always a fight from the bottom up."
At the same time as the main awards ceremony, local band Snow Patrol were playing a free gig to 15,000 people in front of
City Hall, with Red Hot Chili Peppers performing at the Ulster Hall.
Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody said Belfast was "literally vibrating with joy" at staging the event.
"It is great that Northern Ireland is getting an international spotlight thrown at it in such a positive way," he said.
He added that it was an "incredible opportunity" for people to think about the music in Northern Ireland.
"The list is endless of new bands at the moment and it is great that MTV have taken their cameras around some of the smaller gigs as well over the past week," he said.
"Very often Northern Ireland in the past has been in the news for other reasons and this is a really, really amazingly positive reason to be in the news."
Organizers said there had been a "10-year courtship" between Belfast City Council and MTV to hold the awards which were watched by tens of millions of people worldwide.
