Insight Guides Great Breaks Glasgow

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight
• Print ISBN: 9781780053646
• eBook ISBN: 9781780059945
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Great Breaks Glasgow is a compact travel guide that combines snappy text with full-colour photography to highlight the very best that this lively city has to offer. The Walks and Tours section suggests various routes around the city to discover the key sights that you will not want to miss; from an artistic amble around the West End and Southside on the Mackintosh Tour, to a trip through Glasgow's industrial heritage via the Old Fruitmarket and City Halls on the Merchant City Tour. Each walk offers a selection of places to eat and drink as you go and clear maps plot all the major sights. The Overview chapter offers some historical context to your trip and suggests some venues to experience Glasgow's vibrant entertainment scene along the way. The Travel Tips section lists the active pursuits and themed holidays you could try, along with essential practical information and hotel recommendations. Glasgow's Top 10 helps you to plan how best to spend your time and experience the very best of this Scottish city.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-color print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travelers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Tour 1: High Street

This half-day, 1-mile (1.6km) walk takes you from the gritty old traders’ hub Mercat Cross up to the spiritual and spooky realms of the Cathedral area and Necropolis

Highlights

Tolbooth Steeple

Barony Hall

Provand’s Lordship

St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art

Glasgow Cathedral

Necropolis

Mercat Cross was the visible evidence of a burgh’s right to hold a market, the domain of traders and merchants, making this area Glasgow’s traditional centre of social and economic life for many centuries. There is no clear evidence of exactly where the original Mercat Cross 1 [map] stood, and the squat octagonal building with a unicorn-topped pillar that now stands on the intersection at Glasgow Cross is a replacement erected in 1929. The Mercat Building located behind it is, despite its Chicagoesque appearance, a warehouse erected in 1925. The arts centre Trongate 103 and the Tron theatre (for more information, click here) have contributed to revitalising this part of the Merchant City area.

Café Smith occupies a tenement building off the High Street.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

The Tolbooth Steeple.

Douglas Macgilvray/Apa Publications

High Street

Tolbooth Steeple

Starting our walk here, the cross is dominated by the Tolbooth Steeple 2 [map], which lies stranded in the middle of busy traffic where the High Street passes into Saltmarket. The Tolbooth was once an integral part of civic life in Glasgow and has occupied this site in various forms since the earliest days. Its functions were manifold, from a meeting place for the town council, to a tax collection point, courthouse and jail.

The square tower was part of a five-storey building that extended west along the Trongate, towards the steeple of Tron-St Mary’s (for more information, click here), and its buttressed crown houses the latest of a fine carillon of bells which, in the 18th century, played out a different Scottish melody every two hours. The present bells, installed in 1881, were tended by hereditary bell-ringers, the last of whom, Jessie Herbert, rang the bells until 1970. Their annual high point was marking the Hogmanay celebrations that saw vast crowds welcoming the New Year in boisterous fashion. The Hogmanay party now takes place in George Square.

Gruesome Tales

If spirits haunt any part of Glasgow, it should be here. Men and women were hanged outside the Tolbooth, and alleged witches and miscreants scourged. The original building had spikes on the walls for the decapitated heads of felons. When the justiciary decamped to the river end of the Saltmarket and the council moved west, the main part of the Tolbooth was lost; only the steeple and its winding stone staircase remain.

The Tolbooth has a long and gruesome history.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

Historical High Street

The High Street runs north past Victorian tenements (1883), with shops below on the left and flats converted from old warehouses on the right. The street names offer clues to the past: Blackfriars Street, from the 13th-century Dominican monastery; Bell Street, after Provost Sir John Bell (1680); and College Street, denoting the Old College, which was sited here until the middle of the 19th century. The University of Glasgow was established by Bishop William Turnbull in 1451 and flourished for the next few centuries in a pleasant environment between the High Street and the Molendinar Burn. It was here that Adam Smith, author of the seminal work on laissez-faire economics The Wealth of Nations, was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1752.

The university moved westwards in 1870 (for more information, click here), and the site was sold to the City of Glasgow Union Railway Company, which demolished it and erected the College Goods Station, which has now also gone. However, the area is currently undergoing substantial redevelopment.

The Mercat Building on the Trongate.

Douglas Macgilvray/Apa Publications

On the left, opposite the High Street Station, is the shell of the old British Linen Bank, which has a statue of Pallas, goddess of wisdom and weaving, and a plaque on the corner recalling that the poet Thomas Campbell frequented a coffee shop on the site.

Crossing George Street and curving up the hill, the road is flanked by restored tenements with crow-stepped gables, turrets and balconies. On this hill, the Scots freedom fighter William Wallace – glorified by Hollywood and Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart – fought a running battle with English forces in 1297.

Barony Hall was designed in the Scottish Gothic Revival style and is a popular venue for weddings, as well as the site of graduation ceremonies.

Mockford & Bonetti/Apa Publications

University Digs

On the corner of High Street and Rottenrow is Barony Hall 3 [map] (Sat–Sun), the first major building of the Cathedral complex, whic...

Table of contents

• How To Use This E-Book
• Glasgow’s Top 10
• Overview: The Art of Reinvention
• Entertainment
• Tour 1: High Street
• Tour 2: The Barras to Saltmarket
• Feature: Sandstone & Steel
• Tour 3: Merchant City
• Tour 4: City Centre
• Tour 5: Going West
• Feature: D.I.Y. Glasgow
• Tour 6: From Kelvingrove to the Clyde
• Tour 7: West End
• Tour 8: South Side
• Tour 9: Mackintosh Tour
• Tour 10: Excursion to Loch Lomond
• Feature: Loch Lomond
• Tour 11: Excursion to Clyde Valley
• Tour 12: Excursion to Burns Country
• Active Pursuits
• Themed Holidays
• Practical Information
• Accommodation