SCOTLAND - Glasgow

As much as I love it, Edinburgh is rather twee. Like Bath or York it is a city that thrives on tourism and it does manage its tourist industry very well. Glasgow, however, is much more workaday. It's history as a mercantile city can be seen in its imposing buildings - stand in George Square surrounded by statues of its fathers and benefactors and look at the City Chambers and you can see this is a city that means business. Being realistic though it has to be acknowledged that like our other major port cities, Bristol and Liverpool some of Glasgow's wealth came from what we now see as "dirty money"

City Chambers

Rear of the City Chambers

George Square

The statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art has become the symbol of the city because of the traffic cone that is almost permanently on the statue's head. You can even buy postcards of it. Almost soon as the council take the cone down, naughty (and probably drunk!) Glaswegians put another up there - according to Wikipedia the council spend (I say waste) £10K per year removing the cones

Down by the River Clyde, Glasgow was much more industrial but  today the docks have closed and the shipbuilding has moved downstream meaning that the area has had to be regenerated. Walk along the Clyde today and you will see a clean river lined by modern steel and glass buildings. The building below is the Clyde Auditorium designed by Foster & Partners and nick-named by the locals The Armadillo. Interestingly Foster & Partners also did the design work for the stations for the Bilbao Metro in Spain. The station entrances take a similar shape to the Clyde Auditorium and have been nick-named by the the people of Bilbao - Fosterillos.

The Cylde Auditorium and the SSE Arena both designed by Foster & Partners

Glasgow Science Centre

On the east side of the city centre in a piece of higher ground stands Glasgow Cathedral. Although the cathedral has a Church of Scotland congregation it is in fact crown property and is managed by Historic Scotland. Behind the cathedral is the Glasgow Necropolis a hillside cemetary for the good and the great of the city.