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Glasgow, Scotland - Guide

Glasgow - General Information

Once the second city of the British Empire, Glasgow has spent the last 20 years shaking off its former image of post-industrial decline. Today, with its handsome but soot-stained Victoria architecture cleaned up and major new developments along the Clyde, it’s a vibrant modern city, acclaimed for its friendliness, clubs, exciting music scene, impressive art galleries and some of the best brand-name shopping in Europe

Glasgow School of Art

Designed by Glasgow’s most distinguished architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the School of Art building is perhaps the city’s most celebrated landmark these days. Mackintosh, a former pupil, won the competition for its design in 1896, when he was only 28, and it was constructed between 1897 and 1909. The art nouveau building features oppositions, wide windows and stern facades, which contrast in a dynamic style, yet form a unified whole. Guided tours are available, but it's best to make reservations, since it is still a working art school and therefore busy during term time. Four on-site galleries that host frequently changing exhibitions. The shop sells a good selection of Mackintosh prints, postcards, and books, plus a selection of contemporary art by the school's students and graduates. The Willow Tearooms, also designed by Mackintosh and furnished with his distinctive high-backed chairs, are also close by on Sauchiehall Street.

Princes Square

Given Glasgow’s notoriously changeable weather, an indoor shopping venue as stylishly designed and well furnished with designer names as Princes Square can be a godsend. It’s essentially a tiered atrium with a glass roof, the different levels connected by escalators. These features are complemented by a replica of Foucault's Pendulum and symmetrical sweeping staircases with ornate, Art Nouveau-influenced balustrades. There’s also a sunken tiled courtyard on the ground floor that makes a good play area for children. Boutique shopping on offer in Princes Square includes Calvin Klein, Hugo, Lacoste, Ted Baker, Space NK, Furla, Moda in Pelle, Reiss and Louise Shafar. On the upper floors there’s also a variety of cafés and restaurants, including Hemingway's Seafood Grill, Fantoosh, the November Café and Terence Conran’s Étain, which was voted 2005/2006 AA Restaurant of the Year, Scotland.

University of Glasgow

The 4th oldest University in the English speaking world, Glasgow dates from 1451, though it has inhabited its current location on Gilmorehill since the late 19th century. The University’s great symbol is the Gothic Revivalist main building, which commands excellent views over the city. Boasting impressive gables, cloisters, a towering spire and a stained-glassed chapel, it’s named after its architect, Gilbert Scott. On its west side, attached to the Pearce Lodge, there’s also the Lion and Unicorn staircase, which was reassembled brick by brick from the original 15th century college. Elsewhere on campus there’s the airy, circular Art Nouveau reading room, as well as Mackintosh House, a rebuilt terraced house designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the Hunterian Museum, the oldest public museum in Scotland, housing a treasure trove of oddities from Scottish anatomist and scientist William Hunter’s collection. The Visitor Centre, located in the main building, has exhibits on the university, a coffee bar, a gift shop and is the starting point for one-hour guided walking tours of the campus.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum

Reopened on 11 July 2006 after a three-year closure for major refurbishment, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is Glasgow's premier museum and the most visited in the United Kingdom outside London. Its imposing red sandstone building was built in 1901 in the Spanish Baroque style as part of an International Exhibition and is situated on Argyle Street, in the West End of the city, on the banks of the River Kelvin. The museum's original collections came mainly from the McLellan Galleries and from the old Kelvingrove House Museum in Kelvingrove Park. Today it contains 8,000 art works and objects displayed over 3 floors, from paintings by Rembrandt, Titian, the Impressionists and the Scottish Colourists to one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world and a vast natural history section. The re-designed Kelvingrove creates a more accessible and visitor friendly attraction, with better and larger shops, café and toilet facilities. Additions to the museum’s collections since its reopening include a ceratosaurus skeleton from the US and the return of Salvador Dali's iconic “Christ of St John of the Cross.”

Glasgow Science Centre

Situated on the banks of the River Clyde at Pacific Quay, the Glasgow Science Centre is a major science and technology museum housed in an appropriately futuristic looking structure that was the first titanium-clad building in Britain. The Centre’s main purposes are to illustrate the scientific challenges facing the 21st century world and to chronicle Glasgow's contribution to science and technology in the past, present and future. The science mall section contains the Scottish Power Planetarium, a climate change theatre, as well as three floors of interactive exhibits, including 'Alice Through the Looking Glass,' an interactive experience about perception. The Centre is also home to an IMAX Theatre, housed in a separate building with a 5-storey tall screen. Sadly the centre’s tower – at 416 feet, the highest structure in the world capable of rotating 360° from its foundations – has been closed since September 2005 after being plagued with technical problems.

The Burrell Collection

Housed in a striking building constructed from pink sandstone, glass and stainless steel, the Burrell Collection is situated in the 360 acre Pollock Park, on the south side of Glasgow. The collection is composed of treasures left to Glasgow by Sir William Burrell, a wealthy ship owner and industrialist who started collecting objets d’art and various curios at the age of 14 and continued to do so until his death in 1958. Though Burrell and his wife gifted the collection to the City of Glasgow in 1946, its dedicated home – the result of an architectural competition – was only opened in 1983. The collection comprises thousands of items, including furniture, textiles, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artefacts, Chinese ceramics, bronzes and jade, French paintings from the 1800s, Scottish paintings, tapestries, stained-glass, alabasters, stone doorways from the Middle Ages and one of the very few original bronze casts of Rodin's Thinker. There’s also a drawing room reconstructed from Sir William's home, Hutton Castle at Berwick-upon-Tweed. The immensely large windows throughout the building are intended to better integrate the collection’s items with the surrounding woodland. The park itself is also well worth a wander, since it contains Pollock House itself and is populated by some prize-winning Highland cows.