Who Were the Glasgow Boys?
The circle of young, rebellious painters who dragged Scottish art into the modern age.
Why Is Glasgow Green So Important?
The oldest park in the city and its greatest gathering place, common ground for six centuries.
Why Is George Square the Heart of Glasgow?
The city’s grand civic square, ringed by statues and crowned by the City Chambers.
Who Was Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson?
Glasgow’s greatest Victorian architect, who reimagined ancient Greece in sandstone long before Mackintosh.
What Famous Ships Were Built on the Clyde?
The Queen Mary, the QE2, the Lusitania and the royal yacht all slid down the same river.
What Is the Oldest Building in Glasgow?
The Cathedral is the oldest building in the city, and Provand’s Lordship the oldest house.
Who Was St Mungo?
The sixth-century missionary who founded Glasgow, worked its four famous miracles, and lies in the Cathedral crypt.
Why Is Glasgow Cathedral So Important?
The only medieval cathedral on the Scottish mainland to survive the Reformation almost intact, where the city began.
How Old Is the University of Glasgow?
Founded in 1451, the second-oldest university in Scotland and the fourth-oldest in the English-speaking world.
Why Is Kelvingrove Built ‘Back to Front’?
Glasgow’s favourite architectural myth, and the truth about which way the great museum really faces.
What Happened to the Gorbals?
From genteel Georgian suburb to notorious slum, to high-rise flats and, at last, revival.
When Did Glasgow’s Trams Stop Running?
The last tram ran in 1962, and a quarter of a million Glaswegians turned out in the rain to say goodbye.
Who Was Charles Rennie Mackintosh?
Glasgow’s greatest architect and designer, and the leading figure of the Glasgow Style.
What Is a Glasgow Tenement?
The sandstone flats that are the defining building of the city, from grand wally closes to crowded single ends.
What Was Red Clydeside?
The years around the First World War when Glasgow became a byword for radical politics.
Why Did Glasgow’s Shipbuilding Decline?
How the greatest shipbuilding river on earth fell almost silent, and the work-in that fought to save it.
Who Were Glasgow’s Tobacco Lords?
The scarlet-cloaked merchants who built much of Georgian Glasgow, and whose names still mark the streets of the Merchant City.
What Does ‘No Mean City’ Mean?
From a line of scripture to a notorious novel about the Gorbals: the phrase that has followed Glasgow for almost a century.
Why Does Glasgow Have Such Strong Irish Roots?
How nineteenth-century migration, and above all the Great Famine, wove Irish heritage into the fabric of the city.
What Is the Glasgow Necropolis?
The Victorian city of the dead on the hill behind the Cathedral, and the stories beneath its monuments.
Why Was the River Clyde So Important to Glasgow?
How a shallow river was engineered into one of the world’s great highways of trade and shipbuilding.
Why Is Glasgow Called the Dear Green Place?
The best-loved fact about the city’s name, and why the truth is more debated than you might think.
What Do the Bird, Tree, Bell and Fish on Glasgow’s Coat of Arms Mean?
The four symbols you see across the city, and the miracles of Saint Mungo behind each one.
Which Is Older, Glasgow or Edinburgh?
A favourite rivalry, settled as honestly as the history allows.
Is the Glasgow Subway One of the Oldest in the World?
Yes, and here is exactly where the beloved Clockwork Orange ranks.
Why Was Glasgow the Second City of the Empire?
How shipbuilding, trade and industry made Glasgow one of the richest cities on earth.