Thousands of Orangemen paraded across the North today for the July 12th commemorations.
For the first time since 1970 the Police Service decided it could cope with security in Belfast without the back-up of the army.
The decision came amid appeals for calm from Sinn Fein and the SDLP as well as unionist leaders and police.
Flash-point parades in north Belfast and Dunloy, Co Antrim, were given light policing and passed off without incident.
At Belfast parade through Ardoyne no music was played as more than 100 Orangemen and bandsmen paraded along the Ardoyne Road.
Around 60 nationalist protesters stood in silence as the parade passed, led by three police officers.
Only one police Land Rover was visible and security had been greatly scaled down from previous years.
Marchers were greeted by around 200 supporters at the junction of the Crumlin and Woodvale roads.
The area was the scene of serious rioting last year but this year's march passed the Ardoyne shops without major incident.
But away from Belfast, an Orange hall was destroyed and another damaged in attacks blamed on republicans.
The hall at Lavin near Armoy, Co Antrim — built in 1987 — will have to be rebuilt following an arson attack. Nationalists and republicans joined unionists in condemning the attack.
Sinn Fein local Assembly member Philip McGuigan said he abhorred sectarianism and urged those responsible to desist.
"The attack on the Orange hall near Armoy was wrong and unacceptable," he said. The SDLP North Antrim MLA, Sean Farren, urged calm and called on the community to deny the fire-bombers the strife they sought.
Despite the calm of this year's parades, unionist leaders sounded a hardline message of no compromise.
DUP leader The Rev Ian Paisley made clear unionists would be no push-over as both Governments sought a political breakthrough in Northern Ireland.
Speaking at a gathering of Orangemen in Portrush, Co Antrim, he said: "Compromise, accommodation and the least surrender are the roads to final and irreversible disaster. There can be no compromise."
Mr Paisley added: "There can be no accommodation, there can be no surrender."
He said there could be no weakness, toleration and no capitulation. There was no place for Sinn Fein in the Government of Northern Ireland.
"It will be over our dead bodies. "Ulster has surely learned that weak, pushover unionism is a halfway house to republicanism."
His message was echoed by party colleague and fellow MP Nigel Dodds who said devolution would only happen in Northern Ireland on the right terms.
He told the Orange Order gathering in Broughshane, Co Antrim that unionists would no longer be browbeaten, bribed or bullied into any arrangements which were not in the best interests of them and also nationalists.
Rejecting the November 24th deadline for a devolution restoring deal, he said: "For true unionists the test is not on some date plucked out of the air by a discredited government."
The Grand Master of the Orange Order, Robert Saulters, carried on the hard-line message, accusing the Government of pandering to paramilitaries.
But he welcomed the decision to provide the Orange Order in Belfast with more than £100,000 to pay for a development officer tasked with transforming the annual event in the city into a tourist-attracting 'Orangefest'.
He accused Sinn Fein of having "milked the system for long enough" and said if they could employ one development officer it was no bad thing.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern monitoring the marches today and was briefed by officials on a continuous basis.
"Mr Ahern will be also following events as they unfold into the evening and night," a spokesman added.
He is due to hold power-sharing talks with the Ulster Political Research Group — closely allied to the Ulster Defence Association paramilitaries - in Dublin tomorrow.