Stirling Castle

One of Scotland's largest and most historically important castles, perched on a volcanic crag above the old town

Stirling Castle is one of the largest and most strategically positioned castles in Britain. It stands on Castle Hill, a volcanic crag with cliffs on three sides, dominating the river crossing where the Lowlands meet the Highlands. The site has been fortified for at least a thousand years, but the buildings you see today belong mostly to the Stewart period — the great age of Scottish royal building between 1490 and 1600.

The Royal Palace, completed by James V in 1542, is the centrepiece. Its exterior is encrusted with sculpted figures of saints, kings and Renaissance grotesques, and the interior has been restored with extraordinary care, including a reweaving of the Unicorn Tapestries that hung in the rooms in the 16th century. The Great Hall, with its hammerbeam roof and harled yellow walls, is the largest medieval hall ever built in Scotland. The Chapel Royal, the Old Kitchens, and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders' Museum all add depth to a visit.

Allow at least three hours, longer in summer when the costumed guides perform set pieces in the palace rooms. The castle is run by Historic Environment Scotland and entry is included with a Historic Scotland Explorer Pass. Avoid the busy middle of the day if you can; first thing in the morning is when the views over the Forth valley to the Highlands are at their best.

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A story
When the masons working on the Royal Palace finished its astonishing carved facade in 1542, they probably did not expect their work to be hidden under whitewash for four centuries. The Stuart kings used the palace as a showcase of Renaissance art; the British army that took the castle over after the Jacobite risings had no use for ornament and painted everything in regulation buff. The 21st-century restoration stripped the paint back, recovered the original pigments and re-wove the Unicorn Tapestries on hand looms — a 13-year project that returned the rooms to something close to how James V would have seen them.