Dunvegan Castle

Dunvegan is the ancestral home of the MacLeods and is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland. It stands on a rocky promontory above its sea loch, partly medieval, partly remodelled in the 19th century in a romantic Scottish baronial style. The exterior is striking from the gardens; the interior is a Victorian recreation around a medieval core.

The collection in the small museum is the real reason to come — the Fairy Flag, the Dunvegan Cup, the dirk used by Rory Mor, and a portrait gallery of MacLeod chiefs. The walled gardens have been replanted with care in the last few decades and are worth at least half the time you spend on site. From the jetty below, boats run out to the seal colonies in summer.

things to do sight
A story
The Fairy Flag, kept in a glass case in the drawing room, is a fragment of yellow silk said to have been given to a MacLeod chief by his fairy wife on the condition that it could be unfurled in battle only three times. The clan claims to have used it twice — once in the 16th century, once in the 17th — and both times to have won impossibly against the odds. Carbon dating has placed the silk somewhere between the 4th and 7th centuries, well before the MacLeods themselves arrived in Skye.