20 best attractions in Scotland

Scot­land is a pic­turesque coun­try with its own tra­di­tions dat­ing back cen­turies. JK Rowl­ing could not help but be inspired by these places when writ­ing a series of books about Har­ry Pot­ter. Believe me, there are many inter­est­ing things wait­ing for you here too.

Who should visit Scotland and why?

First of all, tourists go to the cap­i­tal Edin­burgh, which is essen­tial­ly a clus­ter of ancient build­ings full of mys­ter­ies and ghosts. Fans of archi­tec­tur­al mas­ter­pieces, art and sepul­chral humor will find quests in the cap­i­tal and will be able to go on the­mat­ic tours of the ancient dis­tricts of the city, as well as vis­it muse­ums, exhi­bi­tions and feel the spir­it of the Mid­dle Ages.

Out­side the big cities of Scot­land peo­ple go for adven­ture. Climb­ing impreg­nable hills that seem quite harm­less, raft­ing on moun­tain rivers with seething waters, Loch Ness and the mon­ster liv­ing in the lake will tick­le the nerves of even fear­less tourists.

Fam­i­ly hol­i­days with chil­dren in Scot­land promis­es to get acquaint­ed with wildlife in nature reserves and pet­ting zoos. And gourmets and lovers of gas­tro­nom­ic delights will appre­ci­ate the local pubs and coastal fish­ing restau­rants with fresh seafood and local whiskey.

Architecture

Royal Mile in Edinburgh

The mile con­sists of sev­er­al streets in the cen­ter of the cap­i­tal. It is worth start­ing a jour­ney through them from Edin­burgh Cas­tle, under the walls of which mer­chants and arti­sans once stood. Now shops and shops with sou­venirs are locat­ed on Laun Mar­ket Street.

Fans of Goth­ic archi­tec­ture should make their way to Par­lia­ment Square, where the gloomy but impres­sive Cathe­dral of St. Giles stands. Walk­ing along the Roy­al Mile, tourists also see the Palace of Holy­rood­house, the offi­cial res­i­dence of Eliz­a­beth II.

Kalzeen Castle

On a hill­side near the Clyde in the 16th cen­tu­ry, a tow­er with res­i­den­tial com­plex­es grew. Two cen­turies lat­er, a fam­i­ly liv­ing in the tow­er found the house cramped and sold it. The new own­er, want­i­ng to expand the area, turned to the out­ra­geous archi­tect Robert Adam.

It took more than a dozen years to rebuild, and the result of the work impress­es tourists even in the 21st cen­tu­ry. The tow­er has become part of an archi­tec­tur­al ensem­ble and a park com­plex with palm trees, a brew­ery, a deer sanc­tu­ary and a nat­u­ral­ist club. Only in Kalzin is the House of Camel­lias, Dol­phins and the Gate of Cats of the 18th cen­tu­ry equipped. There is a muse­um in the res­i­den­tial build­ings, the expo­si­tion of which presents old clothes, an oval stair­case, a col­lec­tion of weapons and sev­er­al inter­est­ing mod­els of ships.

Historical landmarks

Edinburgh castle

The ancient fortress is locat­ed at the top of the Roy­al Mile, in the west­ern part of the Old City. The cas­tle was built in the 9th cen­tu­ry BC. At one time it was used as a place for the roy­al roy­al­ties, a mil­i­tary base, and now — as a tourist attrac­tion in Scot­land, bring­ing the crown an annu­al income. A col­lec­tion of weapons is exhib­it­ed here, and attrib­ut­es of pow­er are stored in the roy­al hall: a crown, a scepter and a state sword. It was in this cas­tle, in a tiny room adja­cent to the queen’s pri­vate quar­ters, that King James VI was born.

Edin­burgh Cas­tle is the home of the famous “One Hour Pis­tol”. From Mon­day to Sat­ur­day, this pis­tol fires at exact­ly one in the after­noon. Inside the citadel, a well of witch­es was dug — a place where women accused of witch­craft were low­ered. The cas­tle is vis­it­ed by 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple annu­al­ly — slight­ly less than the Tow­er of Lon­don. You can get around the cas­tle and see the exhi­bi­tion halls in a day (the dimen­sions of the fortress are unusu­al­ly large). And from the walls of the fortress offers a panoram­ic view of the city.

Dunvegan Castle

Dun­ve­g­an Cas­tle tow­ers over the epony­mous vil­lage on the Isle of Skye. It is known not so much for its ancient walls as for its inhab­i­tants. Today, Hugh MacLeod, the thir­ti­eth head of the ancient clan, lives in the fortress. The coat of arms of the MacLeod fam­i­ly flaunts a bul­l’s head and the mot­to “Be per­sis­tent”. The coat of arms appeared in mem­o­ry of the bat­tle of the ances­tor of the clan, Mal­colm Macleod, with a rabid bull at the begin­ning of the 13th cen­tu­ry.

Broch of Mouse

A round stone tow­er 13 meters high has been stand­ing on Mousa Island since 300 BC. Archae­ol­o­gists sug­gest that such build­ings were built simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for hous­ing and defense. Today there are hun­dreds of such Iron Age mon­u­ments in the Scot­tish Isles, but Broch of Mousa is above them all. This World Her­itage Site is men­tioned in the Scan­di­na­vian sagas.

Palace of Holyroodhouse

Since Scot­land is part of the UK, the British Crown has its own sum­mer res­i­dence here. The Palace of Holy­rood­house bears the title of the Queen’s favorite res­i­dence. Eliz­a­beth II vis­its it annu­al­ly dur­ing the sum­mer months. The rest of the time the cas­tle is shown to tourists.

The name of Holy­rood in trans­la­tion sounds like “Holy Cross” — the Augus­tin­ian Order used to be locat­ed here. By the XIII cen­tu­ry, the palace grad­u­al­ly col­lapsed: its roof col­lapsed, and the water slow­ly wore away the mason­ry, until the build­ing was restored.

Eilean Donan Castle

The stone build­ing on Donan Island was built in the 13th cen­tu­ry with the per­mis­sion of King Alexan­der II. The cas­tle was guard­ed by the Loch Duich fjord until the begin­ning of the 18th cen­tu­ry, when it itself col­lapsed. The own­er of the fortress in the XIII cen­tu­ry was Col­in Fitzger­ald, who received it as a gift from the king in grat­i­tude for his vas­sal loy­al­ty. In 1911, the cas­tle was pur­chased and restored by John McRae-Gilstrap. His descen­dants still live in the six rooms of the fortress and treat guests with heather hon­ey.

Stirling Castle

Built in the Mid­dle Ages, the Scot­tish fort stands on top of Cas­tle Hill, tow­er­ing over the town of the same name. The fortress is sur­round­ed by cliffs on three sides. The cas­tle was besieged eight times, but nev­er con­quered. And in the 17th cen­tu­ry, its walls were addi­tion­al­ly strength­ened from the out­side.

Urquhart Castle

The fortress was built between the 13th and 16th cen­turies on the site of an old fort near Loch Ness. She played a deci­sive role in the strug­gle for Scot­tish inde­pen­dence in the 14th cen­tu­ry. In 1692, a Jaco­bite troop caused severe dam­age to the ancient walls when they tried to blow up the mason­ry. For two cen­turies, the cas­tle stood in ruins, until in our time it fell under the juris­dic­tion of the state. Today Urquhart is a very pop­u­lar attrac­tion in Scot­land.

Interesting places

National Gallery of Scotland

The old­est art gallery in the coun­try with the rich­est col­lec­tion of Euro­pean paint­ings and sculp­tures. The expo­si­tions pre­sent­ed con­sist of the cre­ations of the great­est artists, por­traits of Scot­tish com­man­ders and oth­er works that immor­tal­ize the his­to­ry of this coun­try.

Ruins of Melrose Abbey

The old ruins were left from a place very icon­ic for the Scots. The Catholic saint Drithelm lived in this monastery in the 7th cen­tu­ry. The heart of the King of Scot­land, Robert I the Bruce, is also buried there. In addi­tion to the abbey in Mel­rose, tourists will be intro­duced to the Abbots­ford estate, where the Wal­ter Scott house-muse­um was recre­at­ed.

Mary King area

The Mary King dis­trict of Edin­burgh is a clus­ter of nar­row streets locat­ed in a low­land. It is cov­ered with many leg­ends about ghosts — most­ly about the spir­its of peo­ple who fell ill with the plague and died 400 years ago. Walk­ing through the mys­ti­cal streets is excit­ing, but tourists should not go to the Mary King Dead End with­out a guide, as it is easy to get lost there.

Isle of Skye

Skye is an island in the Inner Hebrides, locat­ed in north­ern Scot­land. Anoth­er name for this charm­ing, stun­ning and even bizarre area is the island of Heav­en. Being on it, you should def­i­nite­ly go to Fairy Glen. Accord­ing to leg­end, fairy crea­tures secret­ly meet each oth­er in this place. In gen­er­al, they pro­tect the island itself and Dun­ve­g­an Cas­tle.

Tourists will be shown the Armadale Cas­tle Gar­dens and the Muse­um of the Islands. And of course, no vis­it to the Isle of Heav­en is com­plete with­out a vis­it to the mag­i­cal cas­tle of Eileen Donan. The Isle of Skye offers boat trips, horse­back rid­ing through pic­turesque pas­tures and warm con­ver­sa­tions in local pubs.

natural attractions

Loch Lomond

The moun­tain reser­voir stretch­es over an area of ​​71 kilo­me­ters — this is the only lake in Scot­land of this size. In depth, Loch Lomond is only slight­ly infe­ri­or to Loch Ness. There are 60 islands on the water sur­face, some of them are of arti­fi­cial ori­gin. On the islands are the ruins of an ancient monastery, medieval cas­tles and fortress­es.

The amaz­ing nature of these places attracts poets, artists and oth­er cre­ative peo­ple. There are leg­ends about the lake, songs and pic­tures writ­ten. With the devel­op­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy and cin­e­ma, its pic­turesque sur­round­ings were often used as scenery.

Luskentyre beach

The Isle of Har­ris seems to be locat­ed in the Caribbean Sea, and not in Scot­land. Kilo­me­ters of white sand and crys­tal clear waters of the Atlantic Ocean are not typ­i­cal for the north­ern lat­i­tude that the island occu­pies. How­ev­er, on this strange beach, you will not find snack and corn ven­dors roam­ing among the dense­ly lying vaca­tion­ers. Com­ing here, it is bet­ter for tourists to stock up on food and drink­ing water, since there is not a sin­gle stall here.

Loch Ness lake

The pic­turesque lake in Scot­land, 37 kilo­me­ters wide and 230 meters deep, is known to every­one. Accord­ing to leg­end, the ancient mon­ster Nessie lives in Loch Ness. an ani­mal 50 meters long, sim­i­lar to a snake, is men­tioned in the annals dat­ed 565 AD.

For some time, noth­ing more was heard about Nessie, and in the 18th cen­tu­ry the mon­ster again caught the eye of vaca­tion­ers. While lovers of the unknown are prov­ing the exis­tence of the beast, and sci­en­tists strong­ly doubt this fact, local res­i­dents are pro­mot­ing the “mon­strous” brand to the mass­es and mak­ing mon­ey on tourism.

Isle of Arran

In hon­or of this island, one of the chaos (spe­cif­ic land­scapes) of Europe, the satel­lite of Jupiter, was named. Arran and the Firth of Clyde togeth­er resem­ble a small­er copy of Scot­land on the ocean — the relief seems so sim­i­lar. In the Mid­dle Ages, the Dukes of Hamil­ton lived here, today the res­i­dence is shown to tourists. Small pic­turesque islands are locat­ed around the island.

Cairngorms National Park

On 4.5 thou­sand square kilo­me­ters, 18 thou­sand peo­ple per­ma­nent­ly live and work, who own 75% of the reserve’s land. The moun­tain­ous plateau with four of the largest peaks in the UK is punc­tu­at­ed by vast forests. Birch, moun­tain ash, alder and wil­low grow here, three rivers flow. Tourists active­ly vis­it the Aviemore resort area in the cen­ter of the park, admire the beau­ties of nature and vis­it the High­land Zoo, where ani­mals of the tun­dra and moun­tains are kept.

Ben Nevis

The peak in the Grampian Moun­tains in the High­lands is the high­est point in the British Isles. When the weath­er con­di­tions are favor­able and the skies are clear, the top of Ben Nevis offers a panoram­ic view of the moun­tains, as well as the vil­lages and city lying at the foot. Alas, there is 7 times more rain­fall here than in Lon­don, and clear skies in these parts are rare.

Orkney Islands

The arch­i­pel­ago in the north of Scot­land con­sists of 70 islands. Of these, only 16 are inhab­it­ed. The Orkney Islands are con­di­tion­al­ly divid­ed into three regions: North­ern, South­ern and main­land. Here tourists get acquaint­ed with the ruins of Viking hous­es, tomb­stones and ceme­ter­ies, whose age reach­es 2000 years, medieval church­es and Renais­sance cas­tles.

The heart of Neolith­ic Orkney is a UNESCO World Her­itage Site. In addi­tion to explor­ing the ancient archi­tec­ture, trav­el­ers can relax here, go fish­ing, go in for pho­tog­ra­phy or water sports. How­ev­er, when vis­it­ing these places, it is impor­tant to know the local laws — tourists are not allowed to enter some islands.