Glasgow Area

Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum

Finnieston or "Squinty" Bridge

Tolbooth Steeple & Mercat Cross

Area Main Page

It is difficult to explain the growth and the importance of Glasgow. It has never been a capital or a residence of Kings, it is on a site that was not easily defensible, and although on a major river it didn't have a natural harbour.

But despite all this Glasgow had already been through two booms and two busts by the time it established itself in the 1800s as the second city of the British Empire and, with the rest of Clydeside, the shipbuilding capital of the world. It was also, by far, Scotland's largest city.

Glasgow's origins lie with a Christian missionary called Mungo who established a church here. By AD600 St Mungo (also known as St Kentigern) was the Archbishop of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, whose Kings resided at Dumbarton Castle. It is usually thought that the name Glasgow comes from St Mungo's description of the community that grew up here as Clas-gu or "dear family".

Glasgow spent the next thousand years as an important ecclesiastical centre. This engine for growth stopped dead in its tracks with the coming of the Reformation in 1560, which although leaving Glasgow Cathedral miraculously unscathed, swept away the power structure of the existing Church in Glasgow and in Scotland more widely. Paisley Abbey, a few miles to the south west, was less lucky, it had been badly damaged before the Reformation and has only been fully restored over the past 150 years. Modern Paisley developed on the abbey lands.

By the 1700s Glasgow was thriving as never before, with new wealth based on the lucrative trade, largely in tobacco, with the American colonies. Glasgow's second major slump came with American independence in 1775, which killed much of its trade overnight.

Glasgow's population increased tenfold during the 1800s. This spectacular growth was based on the development of heavy industries using raw materials from places like Motherwell, Wishaw, Hamilton, Airdrie and Coatbridge in the central belt of Scotland. Of particular importance was the remarkable development of the shipyards along the length of the River Clyde, especially in Port Glasgow and Greenock. Clydeside suffered during the depression of the 1930s, but this was only a precursor to the eventual demise of the shipbuilding industry in the 1960s and 1970s.

After the second world war, housing was a key priority many residents of the city's notorious inner city slums were moved out to peripheral estates, or to new towns like East Kilbride and Cumbernauld.

Today's Glasgow has in large measure recovered from this third disaster, and has been referred to as the world's first post-industrial city. It has done so painfully, slowly, and very unevenly, and still has some of the most deprived areas in Scotland. But no visitor to Glasgow can fail to feel the vitality and energy with which it entered the third millennium.

More widely the Glasgow area is home to a wide variety of attractions old and new. The city centre is famous for its shopping, and for its amazing collection of architecture. Gathered around Glasgow Cathedral you find a number of other attractions including Glasgow Necropolis, the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, which doubles as a Cathedral Visitor Centre, and Provand's Lordship, arguably the oldest house in Glasgow. On Glasgow Green, the oldest public space in the city, you find the magnificent People's Palace and Winter Gardens.

In the West End you find the magnificent Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Museum of Transport. The nearby University is home to the Hunterian Museum and Hunterian Art Gallery.

On the south side of Galsgow are a range of attractions including, in Pollok Park, Pollok House and the Burrell Collection. Further east lie Greenbank Garden and Alexander "Greek" Thomson's most famous domestic building, Holmwood House, while further to the west is Crookston Castle.

To the east of the city attractions include the mighty Bothwell Castle overlooking the Clyde near Uddingston and the nearby David Livingstone Centre, while an unexpected find close to Junction 10 on the M8 is Provan Hall, the best-preserved medieval fortified country house in Scotland. Still more unexpected is the Museum of Scottish Country Life, on the edge of East Kilbride.

And if you head downstream on the Clyde you find Newark Castle, remarkably preserved in Port Glasgow on a site that was until quite recently surrounded by shipyards. Further still along the Clyde, past Greenock, you find Gourock, traditional ferry terminus for Dunoon. And around the corner of the Clyde Estuary is the attractive village of Inverkip, with its marina.

Six miles north west of Glasgow is the affluent suburb of Bearsden, where you will also find the Bearsden Roman Baths.