Glasgow Guide

Long regarded as Scotland’s cosmopolitan capital, Glasgow is a vibrant, modern and engaging city, with energy to spare. A weekend, or longer, here, will reward you with world class art, architecture, attractions and, by some margin, the best nightlife in Scotland.

Like all our great industrial cities in the UK, Glasgow has had to work hard to reinvent itself as a leisure destination over the past couple of decades. But thankfully it has and Glasgow has always been a place that knows how to work hard, and play hard in equal measure.

That’s why its sandblasted Victorian Buildings is now as vibrant and bustling by night as its offices and warehouses used to be by day: its restaurants revealing a city that’s stirring up a few surprises in the kitchen too. Why its strident public art collections aren’t preserved in aspic in airless ivory towers, but the centrepieces of vibrant cultural centres, where hands-on exhibitions, lunchtime recitals and up and coming artists are giving equal billing with the city’s priceless masterpieces.

But some things never change. The heart of Glasgow, Sauchiehall Street, Buchanan street and Agryll street remains an animated thoroughfare of local and international fashion stores, while the West
End’s Byre’s road is a kaliedoscopic melting pot of cultures, cuisines and captivating, independent art and craft stores.

In recent years, too, the city has been reconnected to its most important artery – the Clyde – with a brace of exciting visitor attractions and concert halls adding their reflections to the stately river’s course.

A symbol, perhaps, that the city – while stridently looking forward – refuses to do so at the expense of its rich and glorious past.