Scotland's style capital: what to do in Glasgow
From rock ’n’ roll drama to urban whisky – via trend-setting art and architecture – Scotland’s upbeat capital of cool has it all.
Glasgow’s nickname, the ‘Dear Green Place’, could hardly be more apt. The city encapsulates Scotland in miniature, with a rolling band of crooked hills and whisky distilleries to the north, a river carving through its midriff and just shy of 100 parks, gardens, castles and national treasures woven into its fabric.
It's also true that it’s one of the world’s first examples of a planned, grid-layout city (take that, Manhattan) and has world-renowned architecture. Glasgow’s poster boy is Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and his star attractions can be savoured on a stroll across the city’s mercantile centre. His Glasgow School of Art may have been devastated in a fire, but many a highlight remains, from the elegance of his Willow Tearooms, to the helical staircase of The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture. The city’s ornate buildings never disappoint. And it’s a heritage that Glaswegians – the city’s upbeat, loquacious locals – are justifiably proud of.
Use our tried-and-tested tips on what to do in Glasgow for a brilliant weekend escape.
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Friday
Get around by: subway. Known as the Clockwork Orange because of its circular line and livery matching the colour of ubiquitous Scottish fizzy drink Irn Bru, Glasgow’s underground train is the world’s third-oldest metro. All-day tickets are a steal at £4.20 (£3 a day with a Smartcard, which costs a one-off £3) and the lines join the dots between the city’s main attractions from early to late.
Check into: Dakota. It's a stylish locally owned hotel that adds a real sense of Glasgow you just don’t find with the big chains, no matter how many Tunnock's Teacakes they leave in the bedrooms for you – think mood lighting, designer furniture and tastefully curated art. Glasgow values style and substance and the smooth façade is backed up with lush fabrics, stand-alone baths and high-thread cotton bed linen. Splash out on the Signature Suite with its super-king size bed and complimentary stocked fridge.
Jacks Bar mixes a mean cocktail – with more than a few drams to choose from – and The Grill is a hotel restaurant worth staying in for. Sink into a leather chair and enjoy a slab of prime Scottish beef expertly cooked over hot coals. The hotel is tucked right in the heart of the city, too, so many sights are walkable.
Eat at: The Anchor Line. The grand old building just off George Square swims in shipping heritage from the days when Glasgow was the world’s shipbuilding centre and Clyde-built liners funnelled across the Atlantic Ocean in a swish of old-world opulence. A brilliant revamp here has preserved the grandeur of the building, flagging up the maritime connections with period details and paintings. Enjoy oysters at the bar from the Clyde island of Cumbrae before lobster mac and cheese.
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Surrender yourself to: Sauchiehall Street. This long throughfare can get more than a little lively at night. Start off in the relative calm of the Art Deco Variety Bar, where Scotland’s alternative rock fraternity are often spotted, before nipping a few doors along to Nice’n’Sleazy.
The skin-tight jeans and scuffed trainers aren't a dress code at this popular rock bar, but you'll fit right in if you do wear them. The likes of the Twilight Sad, Belle and Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand are known to visit, while downstairs is a claustrophobic music venue where touring bands are reminded, for better or worse, just how vocal a Scottish audience can be. Marvel at the spectacle or hurl yourself into the stramash.
Saturday
Top tip: look up. Glasgow delivers spectacle from on high and its buildings have serious wow factor, especially in and around the Merchant City area. Glasgow is also an immensely walkable city, so wear sturdy shoes, embrace the fresh air, and make sure you pack an umbrella. Here life yields to all the elements and the city shines through all weathers with cinematic drama.
See: Gallery of Modern Art. t’s hard to know what’s more famous about this ground zero for modern art: the works inside the neo-classical building, or the statue of the Duke of Wellington on the steps – the orange traffic cone balanced on his brow has come to symbolise the city’s coal-black humour and disdain for authority. Come for the cone, stay for career highlights from David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Sebastião Salgado, as well as Scottish artists John Bellany and Peter Howson.
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Delve into: Riverside Museum. The late Zaha Hadid’s quite brilliant Riverside Museum is worth visiting for its architecture alone. Hanging over the Clyde, Glasgow’s answer to the Sydney Opera House, it tells the story of the lifeblood river, housing Glasgow’s Museum of Transport. Walk through an old Glaswegian street, ride a historic subway car and then get lost amidst a rotating sea of ship models.
Have a dram at: The Clydeside Distillery. It’s not just in the straw-coloured Highlands that whisky is an art form. Following the 2017 opening of the Glasgow Distillery Co. in an old pump house (the first to do so in more than a century) this small-batch, urban distiller brings whisky back into the folds of Finnieston. Look back in history and such punch-drunk opportunism isn’t that crazy. Glasgow was once home to more than 33 Victorian-era outfits, with Queen’s Dock on the banks of the River Clyde the beating heart of the global Scotch industry.
Tours here are fantastic, split between an exhibition alive with all sorts of audio visual trickery, and the distillery itself – one combines whisky with chocolate in a determined attempt to do things a little differently. A very well stocked shop awaits at the and a café where you should have lunch. Tuck into their Taste of Scotland Platter, filled with Bradan Rost smoked salmon, venison salami, and cheeses including Strathdon Blue – accompanied by a wee dram, of course.
Discover: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. There’s little not to like about art, sculpture, dinosaurs, an Asian elephant and a Spitfire all under one roof. The city's most popular museum – you can walk up the River Kelvin here from the Clydeside Distillery – hides 22 themed galleries beyond a baroque sandstone grimace. One highlight, among many, is Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dalí. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, of course, gets a look in too.
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Take in a show at: Òran Mór. It’s rare for religion to be forsaken in the name of regeneration, but not in Glasgow. A saunter down Byers Road leads to this church-turned-bar, with a mural by local artist and Lanark author Alasdair Gray. At lunchtime (Mon–Sat only, 1pm) the popular residency, “A Play, a Pie, and a Pint,’ combines the city’s holy trinity of flavours. It’s so good, in fact, it has become the UK’s most successful lunchtime theatres.
Eat at: Crabshakk. You just don’t get seafood this good in many cities. The produce from Scotland's nutrient-rich Gulf Stream waters is sublime and left to do the talking. Boat-fresh delights here include giant king scallops served with a sauce fashioned from their own roe, and a seafood platter that struggles on to the table like a heaving fishing net being hauled aboard a trawler. The spaghetti vongole is the best this side of Genoa. Go but book or you won’t be dining. They’ve opened a second Glasgow branch, but the original – in Finnieston, Glasgow’s hipster capital – remains the best.
Continue the party at: SWG3. Home to a see-and-be-seen arts and music venue, repurposed out of a series of defunct railway arches, this unpredictable community for creatives regularly puts on the hottest tickets in town. After the closure of The Arches, Glasgow’s mythical Xanadu-like nightclub, this is a winning alternative. For more mainstream acts, Finnieston also has Scotland’s largest entertainment venue, the massive, well-run, Ovo Hydro.
Sunday
Pay your respects at: Glasgow Cathedral. Built on the tomb of the city's patron saint Saint Mungo, this medieval cathedral is a superb example of Gothic architecture on the fringe of the Merchant City. It's worth a wander regardless of your faith and its tall spire casts a shadow over the ivy-covered confines of the nearby Necropolis, Glasgow’s city of the dead and Victorian-era cemetery.
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Head out with: Glasgow Music City Tours. It’s no surprise that UNESCO chose Glasgow as the UK's first City of Music. This after all is the city that brought the world everyone from Simple Minds, Texas and Deacon Blue, through to Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai and Chvrches. These tours open up Glasgow’s musical heritage in a fun, irreverent way, with plenty of options, whether you want the greatest hits, touring legendary gig venues like King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, or you want to take on a folkier, more traditional tinge.
For something different eschew a guided tour, put together a Glaswegian playlist, tour the venues yourself and also take in Glasgow’s burgeoning street art murals on the City Centre Mural Trail.
Stop for lunch at: Café Gandolfi. Before Hebridean-born chef-owner Seumas MacInnes came to town, Stornoway black pudding was used mainly to grout brickwork in Glasgow, or so he jokes. Now it’s a highlight at his long-running, all-day café, which specialises in the full monty of Scotland’s larder. For nostalgic dishes, such as Cullen skink soup and Arbroath smokies, look no further. You’ll want to take the solid, beautifully fashioned Tim Steadwood furniture home and recreate the menu at home too. It also serves great coffee.
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Shop in: Mono. You’re unlikely to have set foot inside a record store like this before. The pitch perfect combo of a café, bar, music venue and rare vinyl emporium, this all-rounder is a magnet for savvy record collectors and local musicians. No wonder: its run by Stephen Pastel, one of the godfathers of the city's music scene. For more indie retail treats head to Finnieston’s Hidden Lane and Byres Road. Or swish around the Merchant City for top-end fashion boutiques and make selective forays onto Buchanan Street, Glasgow’s ‘Style Mile’.
Rock on at: The Barrowland Ballroom. To see this creaky and dilapidated venue on any given night, when the dance floor turns into a raucous bear pit, is to become part of the city’s music history. Everyone from The Clash and Depeche Mode to Oasis and U2 has played, but you’ll need to steal, borrow or beg for a ticket to see homegrown legends Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub or Mogwai top the bill. Few venues in the UK – indeed, anywhere in the world – rival it for scuzzy rock ’n’ roll glamour.
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Extra time in Glasgow?
It takes months to really get under Glasgow’s skin, but there is plenty to enjoy on a day trip in the environs too.
Get back to nature at: Loch Lomond. The banks of Scotland’s largest loch, are famously bonnie, with the Highland Boundary Fault forging hills and drama. The waters are dotted with forested islands, some of which you can explore – one even has wallabies.
Take a boat cruise, enjoy a sea plane ride or, even better, stay over at the brilliantly reborn (in 2021) Cameron House, one of Britain’s finest resort hotels. You can catch that sea plane from the centre of Glasgow straight to reception.
Chill out with: some time by the sea. Jump on a train at Glasgow Central and soon the sea air will fill your nostrils as seagulls squawk at Wemyss Bay, home to surely the most elegant Victorian pier still standing. Look out for porpoises and dolphins as you ease over on the half hour ferry to the Isle of Bute. Revel in the spirit of the old ‘doon the watter’ tourism when Glaswegians flocked to the only town of Rothesay, or take a bus tour around this beguiling and deeply scenic island.
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Hike in: the Trossachs. If you don’t have time to get up to the Scottish Highlands proper, these foothills hint at their drama and are utterly charming in their own right. In fact they're much more densely forested – an antidote to some of the more barren landscapes further north. Think hills, lochs and woodland, inhabited by eagles, red deer and cute red squirrels. Take a hike or delve back to the days when Victorian artists, poets and dreamers flocked here by taking a ride on the old SS Sir Walter Scott steamship on Loch Katrine.
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