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Explore Glasgow |
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City Centre | Clydeside | Southside | West End
| Glasgow's large City Centre is ranged across the north bank of the River
Clyde. At its geographical heart is George Square , a nineteenth-century
municipal showpiece crowned by the enormous City Chambers at its eastern
end. Behind this lies one of the greatest marketing successes of the 1980s,
the Merchant City , an area which blends magnificent Victorian architecture
with yuppie conversions. The grand buildings and trendy cafés cling to
the borders of the run-down East End , a strongly working-class district
that chooses to ignore its rather showy neighbour. The oldest part of
Glasgow, around the Cathedral , lies immediately north of the East End. Called by poet John Betjeman "the greatest Victorian city in the world", Glasgow's commercial core spreads west of George Square, and is mostly built on a large grid system - possibly inspired by Edinburgh's New Town - with ruler-straight roads soon rising up severe hills to grand, sandblasted buildings. The same style was copied by many North American cities, and indeed parts of Glasgow have been pressed into service as nineteenth-century New York in films such as House of Mirth . The main shopping areas here are Argyle Street , running parallel to the river, and Buchanan Street , which links Argyle Street to the pedestrianized shopping thoroughfare, Sauchiehall Street . Just to the northwest of here is Charles Rennie Mackintosh's famous Glasgow School of Art. Cathedral Area Rising north up the hill from the Tolbooth Steeple at Glasgow Cross is Glasgow's High Street . In British cities, the name is commonly associated with the busiest central thoroughfare, and it's a surprise to see how forlorn and dilapidated Glasgow's version is, long superseded by the grander thoroughfares further west. The High Street leads up to the Cathedral , on the site of Glasgow's original settlement. Cathedral Area - Glasgow Cathedral Built in 1136, destroyed in 1192 and rebuilt soon after, stumpy-spired Glasgow Cathedral (April-Sept Mon-Sat 9.30am-6pm, Sun 2-5pm; Oct-March Mon-Sat 9.30am-4pm, Sun 2-4pm; free) was not completed until the late fifteenth century, with the final reconstruction of the chapterhouse and the aisle designed by Robert Blacader, the city's first archbishop. Thanks to the intervention of the city guilds, it is the only Scottish mainland cathedral to have escaped the hands of religious reformers in the sixteenth century. The cathedral is dedicated to the city's patron saint and reputed founder, St Mungo, about whom four popular stories are frequently told - they even make an appearance on the city's coat of arms. These involve a bird that he brought back to life, the bell with which he summoned the faithful to prayer, a tree that he managed to make spontaneously combust and a fish that he caught with a repentant adulterous queen's ring on its tongue. On entering, you arrive in the impressively lofty nave of the upper church , with the lower church entirely hidden from view. Either side of the nave, the narrow aisles are illuminated by vivid stained-glass windows, most of which date from the last century. Threadbare Union flags and military pennants hang listlessly beneath them, serving as a reminder that the cathedral is very much a part of the Unionist Protestant tradition. Beyond the nave, the choir is hidden from view by the curtained stone pulpit, making the interior feel a great deal smaller than might be expected from the outside. Two sets of steps from the nave lead down into the lower church , where you'll see the dark and musty chapel surrounding the tomb of St Mungo. The saint's relics were removed in the late Middle Ages, although the tomb still forms the centrepiece. The chapel itself is one of the most glorious examples of medieval architecture in Scotland, best seen in the delicate fan vaulting rising up from the thicket of cool stone columns. Cathedral Area - Glasgow Cathedral - Necropolis Rising up behind the Cathedral, the atmospheric Necropolis is a grassy mound covered in a fantastic assortment of crumbling and tumbling gravestones, ornate urns, gloomy catacombs and Neoclassical temples. Inspired by the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, developer John Strong created a garden of death in 1833, and it quickly became a fitting spot for the great and the good of wealthy nineteenth-century Glasgow to indulge their vanity. Various paths lead through the rows of eroding, neglected graves, and from the summit, next to the column topped with an indignant John Knox, there are superb views which capture the city and its trademark mix of grit and grace - the steaming chimneys of the Tennants brewery, the traffic on the M8 motorway, the crowded city-centre offices, the serene cathedral itself, and a wide cityscape of spires and high-rise blocks to the south and east. Cathedral Area - Provand's Lordship and the Garden of St Nicholas Across the Cathedral Square from the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art , the oldest house in the city, the Provand's Lordship (same times; free) dates from 1471, and has been used, among other things, as an ecclesiastical residence and an inn. Inside, the recreations of life in the fifteenth century aren't particularly arresting unless you've an interest in period furniture. Behind the Provand's Lordship lies the small Garden of St Nicholas , a herb garden contrasting medieval and Renaissance aesthetics and approaches to medicine, with muddled clusters of herbs amid stone carvings of the heart and other organs. Cathedral Area - St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free) focuses on objects, beliefs and art from Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Portrayals of Hindu gods are juxtaposed with the stunning Salvador Dalí painting St John of the Cross . In addition to the main exhibition there is a small collection of photographs, papers and archive material looking at religion in Glasgow, the power and zealotry of the nineteenth-century Temperance movement and Christian missionaries. East End East of Glasgow Cross, down Gallowgate beyond the train lines, lies the East End , the district that perhaps most closely corresponds to the old perception of Glasgow. The Depression caused the closure of many factories, leaving communities stranded in an industrial wasteland. Today isolated pubs, tatty shops and cafés sit amidst this dereliction, in sharp contrast to the gloss of the Merchant City only a few blocks to the west. Walking around here you definitely get the sense that you're off the tourist trail, but unless you're here after dark it's not as threatening as it may feel, and there's no doubt that the area advertises a rich flavour of working-class Glasgow. Three hundred yards down either London Road or Gallowgate is The Barras , Glasgow's largest and most popular weekend market (Sat & Sun 9am-5pm). Selling household goods, bric-a-brac, second-hand clothes and records, none of it particularly high quality, the stalls spill out into the surrounding cobbled streets. The fast-talking traders, lively atmosphere and entertaining vignettes of Glasgow life make it an off-beat diversion from shopping-mall banality. Between London Road and the River Clyde are the wide and tree-lined spaces of Glasgow Green . Reputedly the oldest public park in Britain, the Green has been common land since at least 1178, when it was first mentioned in records. On the northeast side of the Green, just beyond the People's Palace, it's worth taking a look at the extraordinary Templeton's Carpet Factory , a massive brick edifice of turrets, arched windows, mosaic-style patterns and castellated grandeur designed in the style of the Doge's Palace in Venice and built in 1892. Subsequent to its days as a carpet factory it has been a small business centre and health centre, but is now disused. East End - People's Palace Opposite the Templeton's carpet factory on Glasgow Green you can still see some poles erected to hang out washing, recalling the days when the Green was very much a public space in daily use. Beside these, the People's Palace (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free) houses a wonderfully haphazard evocation of the city's history. This squat, red-sandstone Victorian building, with a vast semicircular glasshouse tacked on the back, was purpose-built as a museum back in 1898 - almost a century before the rest of the country caught on to the fashion for social history collections. While many of the displays are designed to instil a warm glow in the memories of older locals, the museum is refreshingly unpretentious, and visitors are almost always outnumbered by Glaswegian families. On the top floor , glowing murals by local artist Ken Currie powerfully evoke the spirit of radical Glasgow, from the Carlton Weavers strike in 1787 to the Red Clydesiders of the 1920s. The west wing looks at famous Glasgow products through history, with displays of everything from cast-iron railings and biscuit wrappers to a giant portrait of Billy Connolly. In the East Gallery is a reconstructed "single-end" or one-roomed house, a typical setting for the daily life of hundreds of thousands of Glasgow people through the years. Downstairs, various themes are explored, including alcohol, the traditional holiday excursion "doon the watter" by steamer to various Clyde coastal resorts, and some guidance to understanding "the Patter", Glaswegians' idiosyncratic version of the Queen's English. The glasshouse at the back of the palace contains the Winter Gardens , with a café, water garden, twittering birds and assorted tropical plants and shrubs. George Square and Around Now hemmed in by the city's grinding traffic, the imposing architecture of George Square reflects the confidence of Glasgow's Victorian age. The wide-open plaza almost has a continental airiness about it, although there isn't much subtlety about the eighty-foot column rising up at its centre. It's topped by a statue of Sir Walter Scott, even though his links with Glasgow are, at best, sketchy. The florid splendour of the City Chambers , opened by Queen Victoria in 1888, occupies the entire eastern end of the square. Built from wealth gained by colonial trade and heavy industry, it epitomizes the aspirations and optimism of late-Victorian city elders. Its intricately detailed facade includes high-minded friezes typical of the era: the four nations which then comprised the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) at the feet of the throned queen, the British colonies and allegorical figures representing Religion, Virtue and Knowledge. It's worth taking a free guided tour of the labyrinthine interior (Mon-Fri 10.30am & 2.30pm; booking recommended on 0141/287 4018) to get a look at the acres of intricate gold leaf and Italian marble. George Square and Around - Along Buchanan Street Buchanan Street runs north-south one block west of George Square, defining Glasgow's main shopping district. At the southern end of the street is Princes Square , one of the most stylish and imaginative shopping centres in the country, hollowed out of the innards of a soft sandstone building. The interior, all recherché Art Deco and ornate ironwork, has lots of pricey, highly fashionable shops, the whole place set to a soothing background of classical music. Glaswegians' voracious appetite for shopping is fed further at the northern end of Buchanan Street, just beyond the underground station, where the Buchanan Galleries is a bewilderingly vast shopping mall of some 600,000 square feet which includes the largest Habitat store in Europe. Next door, almost anonymous beside its massive neighbouring auditorium of consumerism, is the £30-million Royal Concert Hall , with an excellent auditorium which plays host to world-class musical events from touring orchestras to rock acts. George Square and Around - Gallery of Modern Art Queen Street leads south from George Square to Royal Exchange Square , where the focal point is the graceful mansion built in 1780 for tobacco lord William Cunninghame. This was the most ostentatious of the Glasgow merchants' homes and, having served as the city's Royal Exchange and central library, now houses the Gallery of Modern Art (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free). Surrounded by controversy from the day it opened in 1996, the gallery has tended to please the punters more than the critics, who have damned the place for emphasizing presentation over content. The mirrored reception area leads you straight into the Earth Gallery , a spacious zone that effortlessly absorbs large-scale socially committed works by the "New Glasgow Boys" - Peter Howson, Adrian Wiszniewski, Ken Currie and Steven Campbell. Right in the middle of the gallery the kinetic sculpture Titanic by Eduard Bersudsky, made of scrap metal and old junk, whirrs into life every hour on the half-hour. Downstairs is the Fire Gallery , containing an imaginative new art library, while upstairs you'll find the Water Gallery , a brightly lit room dealing with the flow of life and death through art, ranging from Andy Goldsworthy's cracked and sun-baked red clay floor to intricate aboriginal paintings on canvas and bark. The blinding-white upper-floor Air Gallery generally features work with vivid visual impact, though in the summer it is filled by major temporary exhibitions. A small set of stairs at the far end of the gallery leads down to an area filled with pop art such as the wavy lines of Bridget Riley's Arrest III and Alan Davie's jazz-inspired Cornucopia , along with the gruesome row of guillotined heads in baskets by Scottish conceptual artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. Don't miss the top-floor café , where a huge mural by Adrian Wiszniewski competes with the view over the rooftops. George Square and Around - Lighthouse At 11 Mitchell Lane, an otherwise nondescript alleyway between Buchanan Street and Union Street, is The Lighthouse (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat 10.30am-5.30pm, Tues 11am-5.30pm, Thurs 10.30am-7pm, Sun noon-5pm; free; ), a spectacularly converted Charles Rennie Mackintosh building which has found new life as Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City. The 1895 building was Mackintosh's first public commission, and housed the offices of the Glasgow Herald newspaper; despite glass and sandstone additions by architects Page & Park, it retains many original features, including the distinctive tower from which the building takes its name. The venue played a central role in Glasgow's reign as City of Architecture and Design in 1999, and acts as a permanent legacy of that year, mounting temporary exhibitions on design and architecture alongside the permanent Mackintosh Interpretation Centre (£2.50), a great place to learn more about the man and his work. The Lighthouse Tower itself gives fantastic views out over the city skyline to a number of his important buildings, including the School of Art and Scotland Street School. Merchant City The grid of streets that lies immediately east of the City Chambers is known as the Merchant City ( ), an area of eighteenth-century warehouses and homes once bustling with cotton, tobacco and sugar traders, which in the last two decades has been sandblasted and swabbed clean with greater enthusiasm and municipal money than any other part of Glasgow in an attempt to bring residents back into the city centre. The expected flood of yuppies, however, was more like a trickle, and the latest efforts to woo them centre on New York-style loft conversions. Yet the expensive designer shops, style bars and bijou cafés continue to flock here, giving the area a pervasive air of sophistication and chic. At the junction of Ingram and John streets, look out for the Italian Centre , a revitalized eighteenth-century warehouse now housing lively cafés, outdoor sculpture and some of the city's most fashionable boutiques - Versace established his first shop in Britain here. Immediately opposite, across John Street, is the delicate white spire of the National Trust for Scotland's regional headquarters, Hutcheson Hall , at 158 Ingram St (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; free). The ground floor houses an exhibition of "Glasgow Style", with some attractive work by contemporary designers and craftsmen on sale, while there's a particularly fine ornately decorated hall upstairs. Here you can pick up a Merchant City Trail leaflet, which guides you around a dozen of the most interesting buildings in the area. Almost opposite in the other direction, a little way down Glassford Street, the Robert Adam-designed Trades House (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, depending on functions; free) still functions as the headquarters of the Glasgow trade guilds. Its history can be traced back to 1605 when fourteen societies of well-to-do city merchants, who were the forerunners of the trade unions, first incorporated. The former civic pride and status of the guilds is still evident, however, from the rich assortment of carvings and stained-glass windows, with a lively pictorial representation of the different trades in the silk frieze around the walls of the first-floor banqueting hall. Merchant City - Glasgow Cross Before 1846, Glasgow Cross - the junction of Trongate, Gallowgate and the High Street, at the southeastern corner of the Merchant City - was the city's principal intersection, until the construction of the new train station near George Square shifted the city's emphasis west. The turreted seventeenth-century Tolbooth Steeple still stands here, although the rest of the building has long since disappeared, and today the stern tower is little more than a traffic hazard at a busy junction. Sauchiehall Street and Around Glasgow's most famous street, Sauchiehall Street , runs in a straight line west from the northern end of Buchanan Street, past some unexciting shopping malls to a few of the city's most interesting sights. Charles Rennie Mackintosh fans should head for the Willow Tea Rooms , not all that easy to spot at first, above a jewellery shop at 217 Sauchiehall St. This is a faithful reconstruction on the site of the 1904 original, which was created for Kate Cranston, one of Rennie Mackintosh's few contemporary supporters in the city, opened in 1980 after more than fifty years of closure. Taking inspiration from the word Sauchiehall , which means "avenue of willow", he chose the willow leaf as a theme to unify the whole structure from the tables to the mirrors and the ironwork. Tea is served here daily from 9.30am until 5pm. A few blocks further west at no. 350 is the recently remodelled CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts; tel 0141/332 7521, ), where eclectically internationalist exhibitions and performances consistently make the centre one of the city's cultural hotspots. Sauchiehall Street and Around - Glasgow School of Art Rising above Sauchiehall Street to the north is one of the city centre's steepest hills, where Dalhousie and Scott streets veer up to Renfrew Street, where you'll find Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art , 167 Renfrew St (guided tours Mon-Fri 11am & 2pm, Sat 10.30 & 11.30am; July & August also Sat 1pm, Sun 10.30 & 11.30am; booking advised; tel 0141/353 4526, ; £5). This is one of the most prestigious art schools in the country, with such notable alumni as artists Robert Colquhoun and Robert Macbryde and, more recently, Steven Campbell, Ken Currie and actor Robbie Coltrane. Widely considered to be the pinnacle of Mackintosh's work, the school is a characteristically angular building of warm sandstone which, due to financial constraints, had to be constructed in two sections (1897-99 and 1907-09). There's a clear change in the architect's style from the earlier severity of the mock-Baronial east wing to the softer lines of the western half. The only way to see the school is to take one of the student-led guided tours , the extent of which are dependent on curricular activities. You can, however, be sure of seeing at least some of the differences between the two halves and a handful of the most impressive rooms. All over the school, from the roof to the stairwells, Mackintosh's unique touches recur - light Oriental reliefs, tall-backed chairs and stylized Celtic illuminations. Even before entering the building up the gently curving stairway, you cannot fail to be struck by the soaring height of the north-facing windows, which light the art studios and were designed, in the architect's inimitable style, to combine aesthetics with practicality. You can peer down from the Furniture Gallery into the school's most spectacular room, the glorious two-storey Library . Here, sombre oak panelling is set against angular lights adorned with primary colours, dangling down in seemingly random clusters. The dark bookcases sit precisely in their fitted alcoves, while of the furniture, the most unusual feature is the central periodical desk, whose oval central strut displays perfect and quite beautiful symmetry. The school also puts on various exhibitions through the year, which you can view without going on a tour. For details, contact the school or check up-to-date listings. Sauchiehall Street and Around - Charles Rennie Mackintosh The work of the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), has come to be synonymous with the image of Glasgow. Historians may disagree over whether his work was a forerunner of the Modernist movement or merely a sunset of Victorianism, but he nonetheless undoubtedly created buildings of great beauty, idiosyncratically fusing Scots Baronial with Gothic, Art Nouveau and modern design. Though the bulk of his work was conceived at the turn of the twentieth century, since the postwar years Mackintosh's ideas have become particularly fashionable, giving rise to a certain amount of ersatz "Mockintosh" in his home city, with his distinctive lettering and small design features used time and again by shops, pubs and businesses. Fortunately, there are also plenty of examples of the genuine article, making the city something of a pilgrimage centre for art and design students from all over the world. He joined the Glasgow School of Art in 1884, where the vibrant new director, Francis Newberry, encouraged his pupils to create original and individual work. Here he met Herbert MacNair and the sisters Margaret and Frances MacDonald; nicknamed "The Spook School" , the four created a new artistic language, using extended vertical design, stylized abstract organic forms and muted colours, reflecting their interest in Japanese design and the work of Whistler and Beardsley. However, it was architecture that truly challenged Mackintosh, allowing him to use his creative artistic impulse in a three-dimensional and cohesive manner. His big break came in 1896, when he won the competition to design a new home for the Glasgow School of Art . This is his most famous work, but a number of smaller buildings document the development of his style. One of his earliest commissions was for a new building to house the Glasgow Herald on Mitchell Lane, off Argyle Street. A massive tower rises up from the corner, giving the building its popular name of The Lighthouse ; it now houses the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre. In the 1890s Glasgow went wild for tearooms, and the imposing Miss Cranston, who dominated the Glasgow teashop scene, gave Mackintosh great freedom of design. Over the next twenty years he designed articles from teaspoons to furniture and, finally, as in the case of the Willow Tea Rooms , the structure itself. Mackintosh designed few religious buildings : the Queens Cross Church of 1896, still at the junction of Garscube and Maryhill roads in the northwest of the city, is the only completed example standing. It is now home to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 10am-2pm, Sun 2-5pm; tel 0141/946 6600,). The spectre of limited budgets was to haunt Mackintosh throughout his career, and he never had the chance to design and construct with complete freedom. However, these constraints didn't manage to dull his creativity, as demonstrated by the Scotland Street School of 1904, just south of the river. It is his most symmetrical work, with a whimsical nod to history in the Scots Baronial conical tower roofs and sandstone building material. The building which arguably displays Mackintosh at his most flamboyant was one he never saw built, the House for an Art Lover , constructed in Bellahouston Park in 1996, 95 years after plans for it were submitted to a German architectural competition. Sauchiehall Street and Around - Piping Centre Behind the hulking Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama, a short way east of the Tenement House, the immaculate Piping Centre , at 30-34 McPhater Street, prides itself on being a national centre for the promotion of the bagpipe. Equipped with rehearsal rooms, performance halls, conference centre, accommodation, museum and an attractive café, it is a meeting place for fans and performers from all over the world. For the casual visitor, the single-room museum (daily 10am-4.30pm; £3; ) is of most interest, with a collection of instruments and related artefacts from the fourteenth century to the present day. Sauchiehall Street and Around - Tenement House Just a few hundred yards north of the School of Art - on the other side of a sheer hill - is the Tenement House , 145 Buccleuch Street (March-Oct daily 2-5pm; Nov-Feb by appointment only; NTS; £3.20). This is a typical tenement block still lived in on most floors, except for the ground and first floor, where you can see the perfectly preserved home of Agnes Toward, who moved here with her mother in 1911, changing nothing and throwing very little out until she was hospitalized in 1965. On the ground floor, the National Trust for Scotland has constructed a fascinating display on the development of the humble tenement block as the bedrock of urban Scottish housing. Upstairs, the flat gives every impression of still being inhabited, with a cluttered hearth and range, kitchen utensils, recess beds, framed religious tracts and sewing machine all untouched. |
| "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde" runs an
old saw, full of sentimentality for the days when the river was the world's
premier shipbuilding centre, and when its industry lent an innovation
and confidence which made Glasgow the second city of the British Empire.
The last of the great liners to be built on Clydeside was the QE2 in 1967,
yet such events are hard to visualize today, with the banks of the river
all but devoid of any industry: shipbuilding is now restricted to a couple
of barely viable yards, as derelict warehouses, crumbling docks and overgrown
wastelands crowd the river's flanks. Glasgow is often accused of failing to capitalize on its river, and it's only in the last few years, with a number of large, striking Clydeside buildings going up, such as the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, or SECC , the Armadillo and the Science Centre , that the river is once again becoming a focus of attention. The easiest way to reach the cluster of Clydeside attractions is to walk the mile or so west along the riverside footpath from the city centre. Otherwise, trains from Glasgow Central low-level station and half-hourly bus #30 from the centre of town run to the Exhibition Centre. Bell's Bridge runs across the river to the Science Centre on the south bank, also served by bus #24 from Renfield Street. The Waverley One of Glasgow's best-loved treasures is the Waverley , the last sea-going paddlesteamer in the world, which spends the summer cruising "doon the watter" to various ports on the Firth of Clyde and the Ayrshire coast from its base at Anderson Quay between Finnieston and the Kingston Bridge. Built on Clydeside as recently as 1947, she's an elegant vessel to look at, not least when she's thrashing away at full steam with the hills of Argyll or Arran in the background. Call the booking office on 0141/243 2224 or check for her sailing times and itinerary. Glasgow Science Centre On the south bank of the river, linked to the SECC by Bell's Bridge, are the three space-age, titanium-clad constructions which make up the Glasgow Science Centre , a massive, hands-on collection opened in 2001 (Tower £5.50, Science Mall £6.50, IMAX £5.50; any two £9.50; all three £14; ). Of the three buildings, the most obvious from afar is the 127-metre Glasgow Tower (daily 10am-6pm, Thurs-Sat until 9pm), an aerofoil-like construction which can rotate to face into the prevailing wind and which is the tallest free-standing structure in Scotland. Glass lifts ascend to the viewing cabin at the top, offering suitably panoramic views. Alongside the tower is the centrepiece of the development, the curvaceous, wedge-shaped Science Mall (daily 10am-6pm). Behind the vast glass wall which faces the river are four floors of interactive exhibits ranging from lift-you-own-weight pulleys to high-tech thermograms. The centre covers almost every aspect of science from simple optical illusions to cutting-edge computer technology, including a section on moral and environmental issues - lots of good fun, although weekends and school holidays are busy and noisy. The smallest of the three buildings on the site is the bubble-like IMAX theatre , which shows a range of mostly science- and nature-based documentaries on its giant screen, with programmes changing regularly. North Bank On Clydeside immediately south of the West End, just over a mile west of the city centre, is the harshly re-landscaped Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, or SECC , two vast adjoining red and grey sheds that make a dutifully utilitarian venue for travelling fairs, mega-concerts and anonymous bars and cafés. Although the huge Finnieston Crane , retained as an icon of shipbuilding days, stands alongside the SECC, the site was rescued from bland obscurity by the arrival in 1997 of a supplementary concert hall officially entitled the Clyde Auditorium but universally nicknamed "the Armadillo" for its rounded exterior of armour-plating. It resembles a poor man's version of the Sydney Opera House but has quickly established itself as one of the city's architectural landmarks. A few hundred yards downstream on the north bank of the river is an attraction known as the Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour (daily: April-Sept 10am-5pm, Oct-March 11am-4pm; £4.50). A 245-foot-long, three-masted barque, the Glenlee was launched on the river in 1896 and is now one of only five large sailing vessels built on Clydeside still afloat. The sheer scale of the Glenlee is her most impressive feature, though various parts of the ship are imaginatively set up to offer an insight into life aboard when she was a hard-working merchant vessel carrying cargo round Cape Horn. |
| On the Clyde's Southside , immediately facing the city centre, are the
notoriously deprived districts of the Gorbals and Govan - sprinkled with
new developments but still obviously derelict and tatty in many parts.
There's little reason to venture here unless you're making your way to
the Science Centre, the famously innovative Citizen's Theatre, or one
of the revived architectural gems of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scotland
Street School and the House for an Art Lover. Moving further south, inner-city decay fades into altogether gentler and more salubrious suburbs, including Queen's Park, home to Scotland's national football stadium, Hampden Park ; Pollokshaws and the rural landscape of Pollok Park, which contains two of Glasgow's major museums, the Burrell Collection and Pollok House ; and Cathcart, location of Alexander "Greek" Thomson's Holmwood House. Southside attractions are fairly widely spread. The underground will get you to Scotland Street School and the House for an Art Lover, while a train from Central station is best for Hampden Park (Mount Florida station) and Holmwood House (Cathcart station). For Pollok Park either take the train to Pollokshaws West station (not to be confused with Pollokshields West), or bus #45, #47, #48 or #57 to Pollokshaws Road, or a taxi (£12-14 from the centre). From the park gates a free minibus runs every half-hour between 10am and 4.30pm to both the Burrell Collection and Pollok House. Burrell Collection Located in Pollok Park some six miles southwest of the city centre, the outstanding Burrell Collection (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free), the lifetime collection of shipping magnate Sir William Burrell (1861-1958), is, for some, the principal reason for visiting Glasgow. Unlike many other art collectors, Sir William's only real criterion for buying a piece was whether he liked it or not, enabling him to buy many "unfashionable" works, which cost comparatively little but subsequently proved their worth. He wanted to leave his collection of art, sculpture and antiquities for public display, but stipulated in 1943 that they should be housed "in a rural setting far removed from the atmospheric pollution of urban conurbations, not less than sixteen miles from the Royal Exchange". For decades, these conditions proved too difficult to meet, with few open spaces available and a pall of industrial smoke ruling out any city site. However, by the late 1960s, after the nationwide Clean Air Act had reduced pollution, and the vast land of Pollok Park , previously privately owned, had been donated to the city, plans began for a new, purpose-built gallery, which finally opened in 1983. Today the simplicity and clean lines of the Burrell building are its greatest assets, with large picture windows giving sweeping views over woodland and serving as a tranquil backdrop to the objects inside. The Courtyard On entering the building, head past the information desk and shop to an airy covered courtyard where the most striking piece, by virtue of sheer size, is the Warwick Vase , a huge bowl containing fragments of a second-century AD vase from Emperor Hadrian's villa in Tivoli. Next to it are a series of sinewy and naturalistic bronze casts of Rodin sculptures , among them The Age of Bronze, A Call to Arms and the famous Thinker . On three sides of the courtyard, a trio of dark and sombre panelled rooms have been re-erected in faithful detail from the Burrells' Hutton Castle home, their heavy tapestries, antique furniture and fireplaces displaying the same eclectic taste as the rest of the museum. The Ground Floor From the courtyard, go through the massive sandstone portal and door from Hornby Castle to the start of the Ancient Civilizations collection which includes an exquisite mosaic Roman cockerel from the first century BC and a 4000-year-old Mesopotamian lion's head. Nearby, also illuminated by enormous windows, the Oriental Art collection forms nearly one-quarter of the whole display, ranging from Neolithic jades through bronze vessels and Tang funerary horses to cloisonné. The earliest piece, from around the second century BC, is a loveable earthenware watchdog from the Han Dynasty, but most dominant is the serene fifteenth-century Lohan (disciple of Buddha), who sits cross-legged and contemplative up against the window and the trees of Pollok Park. Burrell considered his Medieval and Post-Medieval European Art , which encompasses silverware, glass, textiles and sculpture, to be the most valuable part of his collection. Ranged across a maze of small galleries, the most impressive sections are the sympathetically lit stained glass and the numerous tapestries, among them the riotous fifteenth-century Peasants Hunting Rabbits with Ferrets . Nearby is a selection from Burrell's vast art collection, the highlight of which is one of Rembrandt's evocative early self-portraits. The Mezzanine Upstairs, the cramped and comparatively gloomy mezzanine is probably the least satisfactory section of the gallery, not the best setting for its sparkling array of paintings. The selection incongruously leaps from a small gathering of fifteenth-century religious works to Géricault's darkly dynamic Prancing Grey Horse and Degas's thoughtful and perceptive Portrait of Émile Duranty . Pissarro, Manet and Boudin are also represented, along with some exquisite watercolours by Glasgow Boy Joseph Crawhall, revealing his accurate and tender observations of the animal world. Hampden Park and the Scottish Football Museum Two and a half miles due south of the city centre, just to the west of the tree-filled Queen's Park, the floodlights and giant stands of Scotland's national football stadium, Hampden Park , loom over the surrounding suburban tenements and terraces. Home of Queen's Park Football Club, the fact that it's the venue for Scotland's international fixtures and major cup finals makes it a place of pilgrimage for the country's football fans. Regular guided tours (daily 10.30am-3.30pm; £2.50; ) offer the chance to see inside the stadium itself. Also here is the engaging Scottish Football Museum (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm; £5), with extensive collections of memorabilia, video clips and displays covering almost every aspect of the game. Football in Glasgow Football, or fitba' as it's pronounced locally, is one of Glasgow's great passions - and one of its great blights. While the city can claim to be one of Europe's premier footballing centres, it's known above all for one of the most bitter rivalries in any sport, that between Celtic and Rangers . Two of the largest clubs in Britain, with weekly crowds regularly topping 60,000, the Old Firm, as they're collectively known, have dominated Scottish football for a century, most notably in the last fifteen years as they have lavished vast sums of money on foreign talent in an often frantic effort to out-do the other while at the same time stay in touch with the standards of the top English and European teams. The roots of Celtic, who play at Celtic Park in the eastern district of Parkhead (tel 0141/551 8653), lie in the city's immigrant Irish and Catholic population, while Rangers, based at Ibrox Park in Govan on the Southside (tel 0870/600 1993), have traditionally drawn support from local Protestants . As a result, sporting rivalries have been enmeshed in a sectarian divide which many argue would not have remained so long, nor so deep, had it been divorced from the footballing scene: although Catholics do play for Rangers, and Protestants for Celtic, sections of supporters of both clubs seem intent on perpetuating the feud. While large-scale violence on the terraces and streets has not been seen for some time - thanks in large measure to canny policing - Old Firm matches often seethe with bitter passions, and sectarian-related assaults do still occur in parts of the city. However, there is a less intense side to the game, found not just in the fun-loving "Tartan Army" which follows the (often rollercoaster) fortunes of the Scottish national team, but also in Glasgow's smaller clubs, who actively distance themselves from the distasteful aspects of the Old Firm and plod along with homegrown talent in the lower reaches of the Scottish league. Queen's Park , residents of Hampden (tel 0141/632 1275), St Mirren , the Paisley team (tel 0141/889 2558), and the much-maligned Partick Thistle , who play at Firhill Stadium in the West End (tel 0141/579 1971), offer the best chances of experiencing the more down-to-earth side of Glaswegian football - mixed with all-important reminders that it is, in the end, only a game. Holmwood House Four miles south of the city centre in the suburb of Cathcart, the finest domestic design by rediscovered Glasgow architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson, Holmwood House (April-Oct daily 1.30-5.30pm; NTS; £3.50), has recently been restored and opened to the public. A commission by James Couper, co-owner of a paper mill on the nearby River Carth, the house shows off Thomson's bold Classical concepts, with exterior pillars on two levels and a raised main door, as well as his detailed and highly imaginative interiors. The restoration is ongoing, as you'll see from the patches of exquisite stencilling revealed beneath the wallpaper, and the fact that the rooms are unfurnished. One room upstairs is given over to a series of displays about Thomson and the history of the house. Also on the upper floor is the drawing room - look for the white marble fireplace and the night-time star decorations on the ceiling, which contrast with a black marble fireplace and sunburst decorations in the room immediately underneath on the downstairs level, the parlour, which also boasts a delightful round bay window. House for an Art Lover West of Scotland Street School, tucked just inside Bellahouston Park, is Charles Rennie Mackintosh's House for an Art Lover (April-Sept daily except Fri 10am-4pm; Oct-March Sat & Sun 10am-4pm but closed occasionally for functions; tel 0141/353 4449; £3.50). Designed in 1901 for a German competition, it was not until 1996, after years of detailed research and painstaking work, that the building was actually constructed and opened as a centre for Glasgow School of Art postgraduate students, with a limited number of rooms open to the public. It's all quintessential Mackintosh, almost unimaginable as a living space but exquisitely stylish and original at the same time. On the upper floor is the main hallway , where massive windows cast a cool light upon an area designed for large parties. In direct contrast, the dazzling, white Music Room has bow windows opening out to a large balcony. The Dining Room is decorated with darkened stained wood and enhanced by some beautiful gesso tiles. On the ground floor, the café (tel 0141/353 4779) is particularly popular with locals on Sunday mornings; there's an attractive menu, and it's open through the day and sometimes also in the evenings. Pollok House Within Pollok Park, a quarter of a mile down rutted tracks west of the Burrell Collection, lies the lovely eighteenth-century Pollok House (daily 10am-5pm; NTS; April-Oct £4, rest of year free; café and gardens free year-round), the manor of the Pollok Park estate and once home of the Maxwell family. Designed by William Adam in the mid-1700s, the house is typical of its age: graciously light and sturdily built, looking out onto the pristine raked and parterre gardens. The house recently came under the management of the National Trust for Scotland, which has made a deliberate effort to return the house to the layout and style it would have enjoyed in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, the paintings range from the Spanish masterpieces in the Morning Room and some splendid Dutch hunting scenes in the Dining Room to the family's worthy but noticeably amateur efforts which line the upstairs corridors. The servants' quarters downstairs do manage to capture the imagination - a virtually untouched labyrinth of tiled Victorian parlours and corridors that includes a good tearoom in the old kitchen. Free tours of the house are available from the front desk, or you can wander around at your own pace. Scotland Street School Museum of Education Opposite Shields Road underground station is the Scotland Street School Museum of Education (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free), another of the city's Charles Rennie Mackintosh treasures. Opened as a school in 1906 to Mackintosh's distinctively angular design, it closed in 1979, since when it has been entertainingly refurbished to house a fascinating collection of memorabilia related to classroom life. There are reconstructed classrooms from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, World War II and the 1960s, as well as changing rooms, a primitive domestic science room and recreations of the school matron's sanatorium and a janitor's lair. |
| The urbane veneer of the West End seems a world away from Glasgow's
industrial image and the hustle and bustle of the city centre. In the
1800s, the city's wealthy merchants established huge estates away from
the soot and grime of city life, and in 1870 the ancient university was
moved from its cramped home near the cathedral to a spacious new site
overlooking the River Kelvin. Elegant housing swiftly followed, the Kelvingrove
Art Gallery was built to house the 1888 International Exhibition and,
in 1896, the Glasgow District Subway - today's Underground - started its
circuitous shuffle from here to the city centre. The hub of life in this part of Glasgow is Byres Road , running between Great Western Road and Dumbarton Road past Hillhead underground station. Shops, restaurants, cafés, some enticing pubs and hordes of roving young people, including thousands of students, give the area a sense of style and vitality. The main sights straddle the banks of the cleaned-up River Kelvin, where the slopes, trees and statues of Kelvingrove Park are framed by a backdrop of the Gothic towers and turrets of Glasgow University and the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery , off Argyle Street. Botanic Gardens At the northern, top end of Byres Road, where it meets the Great Western Road, is the main entrance to the Botanic Gardens (daily 7am-dusk; free). The best-known glasshouse here, the hulking, domed Kibble Palace (daily 10am-4.45pm; winter closes 4.15pm; closed for restoration after autumn 2002), was built in 1863 for wealthy landowner John Kibble's estate on the shores of Loch Long, where it stood for ten years before he decided to transport it into Glasgow, drawing it up the Clyde on a vast raft pulled by a steamer. Today the palace houses a damp, musty collection of swaying palms from around the world, along with an unremarkable but well-placed café. Nearby, the Main Range Glasshouse (same times) is home to lurid, blooming flowers and plants luxuriating in the humidity, including stunning orchids, cacti, ferns and tropical fruit. Between the two in the old curator's house is a small visitor centre (daily 11am-4pm; free) with art exhibitions an interactive computer aimed at younger visitors. Glasgow University and the Hunterian Museum Dominating the West End skyline, the gloomy turreted tower of Glasgow University , designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in the mid-nineteenth century, overlooks the glades of the River Kelvin. Access to the main buildings and museums is from University Avenue, running east from Byres Road. In the dark neo-Gothic pile under the tower you'll find the University Visitor Centre (Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm; May-Sept also Sun 2-5pm), which, as well as giving information for potential students, distributes leaflets about the various university buildings and the statues around the campus. From May to September historical tours of the campus are run from here (check schedules on 0141/330 5511; £2). It's possible to join a tour up the sky-piercing university tower (May-Sept Fri 2pm; free), climbing 228 narrow spiral-staircase steps to some heady views; places, though, are limited to twenty people, with tickets available only in person that morning from the Visitor Centre. Beside the Visitor Centre is the Hunterian Museum (Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm; free), Scotland's oldest public museum, dating back to 1807. The collection was donated to the university by ex-student William Hunter, a pathologist and anatomist whose eclectic tastes form the basis of a fairly diverting zoological and archeological jaunt. Exhibitions include Scotland's only dinosaur, a look at the Romans in Scotland - the furthest outpost of their massive empire - and a vast numismatic collection. Glasgow University and the Hunterian Museum - Hunterian Art Gallery Opposite the university, across University Avenue, is Hunter's more frequently visited bequest, the Hunterian Art Gallery (Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm; free), best known for its wonderful works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler: only Washington DC has a larger collection. Whistler's breathy landscapes are less compelling than his portraits of women, which give his subjects a resolute strength in addition to their fey and occasionally winsome qualities: look out especially for the trio of full-length portraits, Harmony of Flesh Colour and Black, Pink and Gold - the Tulip and Red and Black - the Fan. A side gallery leads to the Mackintosh House (closed 12.30-1.30pm; free), a re-creation of the interior of the now-demolished Glasgow home of Margaret and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. An introductory display contains photographs of the original house sliding irrevocably into terminal decay, from where you are led into an exquisitely cool interior that contains over sixty pieces of Mackintosh furniture on three floors. Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery Founded on donations from the city's chief industrialists, the huge, red-brick fantasy castle of Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free) is a brash statement of Glasgow's nineteenth-century self-confidence. On the ground floor, the central hall is an impressive, airy introduction to the style of the place. However, it's the art collections, the majority of which are upstairs, that are of most interest. Room 22 contains some superb Italian paintings, notably Botticelli's delicate Annunciation , Giorgione's rich and vibrant The Adulteress Brought Before Christ , and some fervent landscapes by Salvator Rosa. Further down the gallery, Rembrandt's symbolic portrayal of a carcass of an ox stands out darkly, along with his quiet portrait, The Man in Armour . Continuing from the seventeenth century and leading up to the early nineteenth century, room 23 contains predominantly British work, dominated by two paintings by Jacob More, a Scottish artist who worked in the elegiacally classical style of Claude. Room 24 is filled with quality work from Scottish and European artists from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, among them Corot, Degas and Millet. As for the Scots, the angelic face of Mrs William Urquhart is testimony to Sir Henry Raeburn's skill as an informal portraitist. Room 25 is dominated by French impressionists and post-impressionists, including work by Monet and Van Gogh, while room 26 sets such continental luminaries as Picasso and Derain alongside excellent work by the increasingly popular Scottish Colourists. The Pink Parasol by J.D. Fergusson, for example, reveals what he learned from Matisse and Cézanne, while Cadell's Orange Blind , with its unexpectedly strident blocks of colour contrasting with the precise, flat brushwork, is one of the gallery's best-loved works. At the time of writing, the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery was on the point of securing a grant for a complete refurbishment of the building. This would mean that the museum would be closed to the public from early 2003 for about one year. For the latest information, contact the tourist office or the Kelvingrove project office on 0141/287 2757. In the east wing, The Scottish Gallery is entirely devoted to native artists. Here Raeburn's magnificent Mr and Mrs Robert N. Campbell of Kailzie almost overwhelms the room, the golden, life-size figures emerging from the loosely brushed background. On the far wall hangs the famous portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Naysmyth, now found on biscuit tins the world over. The Glasgow Style room is dedicated to the era when Charles Rennie Mackintosh was in his prime: this marvellous collection of furniture is crowned by a pair of domino tables and chairs designed by Mackintosh for the tearooms of Miss Cranston. The Glasgow Boys are well represented, with the decoratively patterned In a Japanese Garden by George Henry alongside his collaborative work with Hornel, The Druids Bringing in the Mistletoe. The Glasgow Boys The traditional rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh was alive and kicking in the late nineteenth century when the Royal Scottish Academy resolutely refused to accept the work of any west-coast artist. That was soon to change, however, when in the 1870s a group of painters formed a loose association, centred in Glasgow, that was to invest Scottish painting with a fresh approach inspired by contemporary European trends (in particular the plein air painting of the Impressionists). Derisively nicknamed "The Glasgow Boys" , the group was dominated by five men - Guthrie, Lavery, Henry, Hornel and Crawhall - who, despite coming from very different backgrounds, all violently rejected the eighteenth-century conservatism which spawned little other than sentimental, anecdotal renditions of Scottish history peopled by "poor but happy" families, in a detailed, exacting manner. They began to experiment with colour, liberally splashing paint across the canvas. The content and concerns of the paintings, often showing peasant life and work, were as offensive to the effete art establishment as their style: until then most of Glasgow's public art collections had been accrued by wealthy tobacco lords and merchants. Of the Glasgow Boys, Sir James Guthrie 's A Highland Funeral (on display in St Mungo's Museum) was hugely influential for the rest of the group, who found inspiration in its restrained emotional content, colour and unaffected realism. Seeing it persuaded Sir John Lavery , then studying in France, to return to Glasgow. Lavery was eventually to become an internationally popular society portraitist, but his earlier work, depicting the middle class at play, is filled with fresh colour and figures in motion. Rather than a realistic aesthetic, an interest in colour and decoration united the work of friends George Henry and E.A. Hornel . The predominance of colour, pattern and design in Henry's Galloway Landscape , for example, is remarkable, while their joint work The Druids (both on display in the Glasgow Style room at Kelvingrove), in thickly applied impasto, is full of Celtic symbolism. Newcastle-born Joseph Crawhall combined superb draughtsmanship and simplicity of line with a photographic memory to create watercolours of an outstanding naturalism and freshness. William Burrell was an important patron, and a good collection of Crawhall's works resides at the Burrell Collection. The Glasgow Boys school reached its height by 1900, and once its members had achieved the artistic respect - and for some the commercial success - they craved, it began to disintegrate and did not outlast World War I. However, the influence of their work cannot be underestimated, shaking the foundations of the artistic elite and inspiring the next generation of Edinburgh painters, now known as the "Colourists". Transport Museum Twin-towered Kelvin Hall opposite the Kelvingrove Museum is home to the excellent Transport Museum , an enormous collection of trains, cars, trams, circus caravans and prams, along with an array of old Glaswegian ephemera (Mon-Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm, Fri & Sun 11am-5pm; free). Just inside the Bunhouse Road entrance, "Kelvin Street" is a re-created 1938 cobbled street featuring an old Italian coffee shop, a butcher (complete with plastic meat joints dangling in the window), a bakery (where labels claim that the buns were provided by the university's taxidermy department) and an old-time underground station. The Clyde Room displays intricate models of ships forged in Glasgow's yards, everything from tiny schooners to ostentatious ocean liners such as the QE2. |
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