TOP ATTRACTIONS:
The Burrell Collection , one of the finest Art collections in the world, is reason enough to visit to the city. The wonderfully forbidding Glasgow Cathedral is another, but it¹s more than the sights that draws you to Glasgow. Anyone with an eye for design and architecture will appreciate that this 'UK City of Architecture 1999's is one place where the new buildings have as much to commend them as the old.
Glasgow's Transport Museum , houses many original steam engines, locomotives, buses and cars all made in Scotland during it's era of world dominating engineering. Close by is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery housing works of art by many famous Scottish and international artists as well as natural history collections and displays of fine art from around the world.
The Glasgow Art School, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, is for many the highlight of their visit to Glasgow. Mackintosh's work is also preserved elsewhere in the city The House for an Art Lover in Pollock Park and Scotland Street School on the city's south side. A few miles away in Helensburgh is Mackintosh's Hill House. Set in a delightful garden setting this is open to the public and houses many examples of CRM's furniture and lighting designs.
SURPRISE YOURSELF If you think of Glasgow as inhabited by stereotyped comic characters then take a walk to the Italian Centre in the revamped 'Merchant City' or wander down the alleyways off Byres Road in the city's West End. There you¹ll find boutiques and cafes that would sit happily in the smartest shopping streets of the world. The beauty of Glasgow is that the smart and chic lives alongside the old and each are proud of the other. It¹s this contrast that gives the place its special atmosphere. Take in the smart Princes Square shopping mall in Buchanan Street where designer labels overwhelm you in an atmosphere of nouveau opulence. Then walk a few blocks to reach the infamous flea-market, 'The Barras' where the Glasgow patter is elevated to a verbal Artform. The juxtaposition of the two sum up beautifully this schizophrenic nature of Glasgow.
>> NEXT ARTICLE
|