Museum sights in Glasgow
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Royal Highland Fusiliers Museum
Charts the history of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, as well as previous regiments, from 1678 to the present. The walls are dripping with exhibits, including uniforms, medals, pictures and other militaria. The wrought ironwork was designed by Mackintosh.
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Paisley Museum
If you’ve got time, at the western end of the High St there’s the Paisley Museum, which features Paisley psychedelia! There are some marvellous exhibits, including contemporary displays of children in the modern world – it’s worth at least a couple of hours. It also has collections of local and natural history, ceramics and 19th-century Scottish art.
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Scotland Street School Museum
An impressive Mackintosh building, the Scotland Street School Museum is dominated by two glass towers. It’s a fascinating museum of education, with reconstructions of classrooms from Victorian times and the 1940s to the 1960s. The place evokes childhood memories for just about everyone – don’t be surprised if you hear a few titters from elderly visitors as they pass the headmaster’s office.
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People's Palace
Set in the city's oldest park, Glasgow Green, is the solid orange stone People's Palace. It is an impressive museum of social history, telling the story of Glasgow from 1750 to the present through creative, inventive displays, which are great for families – the kids will love the re-creation of a WWII air raid. The palace was built in the late 19th century as a cultural centre for Glasgow's East End. The attached greenhouse, the Winter Gardens, has tropical plants and is a nice spot for a coffee.
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St Mungo’s Museum
A startling achievement, St Mungo’s Museum is an audacious attempt to capture the world’s major religions in an artistic nutshell. The result is commendable. The attraction is twofold: firstly, impressive art that blurs the lines between religion and culture; and secondly, the opportunity to delve into different faiths, an experience that can be as deep or shallow as you wish. There are three galleries, representing religion as art, religious life and, on the top floor, religion in Scotland. Britain’s only Zen garden is outside.
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St Mungo's Museum of Religious Life & Art
Set in a reconstruction of the bishop's palace that once stood in the cathedral forecourt, this museum is an audacious attempt to capture the world's major religions in an artistic nutshell. A astartling achievement, it presents the similarities and differences of how various religions approach common themes such as birth, marriage and death. The attraction is twofold: firstly, impressive art that blurs the lines between religion and culture; and secondly, the opportunity to delve into different faiths, an experience that can be as deep or shallow as you wish. There are three galleries, representing religion as art, religious life and, on the top floor, religion…
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Hunterian Museum
Housed in the glorious sandstone building of the university, which is in itself reason enough to pay a visit, this quirky museum contains the collection of renowned one-time student of the university, William Hunter (1718–83). Hunter was primarily an anatomist and physician but, as one of those gloriously well-rounded Enlightenment figures, he interested himself in everything the world had to offer. Pickled organs in glass jars take their place alongside geological phenomena, potsherds gleaned from ancient brochs, dinosaur skeletons and a creepy case of deformed animals. The main halls of the exhibition, with their high vaulted roofs, are magnificent in themselves. A…
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Museum of Transport
Across Argyle St from the Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery is the surprisingly interesting and very comprehensive, but badly signposted, Museum of Transport. Not convinced? It’s actually a very fine museum with exhibits including a reproduction of a 1938 Glasgow street scene, a display of cars made in Scotland, plus assorted railway locos, trams, bikes (including the world’s first pedal-powered bicycle from 1847) and model ships. There’s a room dedicated to the Clyde shipyards. It’s like peeping through a porthole at the not-too-distant past. Note that the museum is due to be incorporated into a new Riverside Museum down at Glasgow Harbour, sometime in 2008. By train it’s a…
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Riverside Museum
The latest development along the Clyde is this visually impressive new museum, whose striking curved facades are the work of Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. A transport museum, forms the main part of the collection, featuring an excellent series of cars made in Scotland, plus assorted railway locos, trams, bikes (including the world's first pedal-powered bicycle from 1847) and model Clyde-built ships. An atmospheric recreation of a Glasgow shopping street from the early 20th century puts the vintage vehicles into a social context. The magnificent Tall Ship Glenlee, a beautiful three-master launched in 1896, is berthed alongside the museum. On board are displays about the…
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Clydebuilt
If immersing yourself in a city's heritage floats your boat, a visit to Clydebuilt will get you paddlin'. It's a superb collection of model ships, industrial displays and narrative, vividly painting the history of the Clyde, the fate of which has been inextricably linked with Glasgow and its people. It's a cleverly designed museum, with twists and turns that offer something new around every corner. Outside you can board Kyles, a typical 1872 vessel. Moored on the empty shores of the Clyde, with only the crying gulls above breaking the silence, it's a perfect place to contemplate the defunct shipyards that formed the cornerstone of Glasgow's industrial heritage.
Clydebuilt…
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Scottish Football Museum
Football fans will love the Scottish Football Museum, which features exhibits on the history of the game in Scotland and the influence of Scots on the world game. Football inspires an incredible passion in Scotland and the museum is crammed full of impressive memorabilia, including a cap and match ticket from the very first international football game (which took place in 1872 between Scotland and England, and ended 0-0). The museum's engrossing exhibits give insight into the players, the fans, the media and the way the game has changed over the last 140 years. You can also take a tour of the stadium (adult/child £6/3; combined ticket with museum £9/4.50), home ground of…
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Glasgow Science Centre
Scotland's flagship millennium project, the ultramodern Glasgow Science Centre, will keep the kids entertained for hours (that's middle-aged kids, too!). It brings science and technology alive through hundreds of interactive exhibits on four floors. Look out for the illusions (like rearranging your features through a 3-D head-scan) and the cloud chamber, which makes natural radiation visible. The museum consists of an egg-shaped titanium-covered IMAX theatre (phone for current screenings) and an interactive Science Mall with floor-to-ceiling windows – a bounty of discovery for young, inquisitive minds. There's also a rotating 127m high observation tower;aplanetarium,…
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Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum
A magnificent stone building, this grand Victorian cathedral of culture has been revamped into a fascinating and unusual museum, with a bewildering variety of exhibits. You'll find fine art alongside stuffed animals, and Micronesian shark-tooth swords alongside a Spitfire plane, but it's not mix 'n' match: rooms are carefully and thoughtfully themed, and the collection is a manageable size. There's an excellent room of Scottish art, a room of fine French Impressionist works, and quality Renaissance paintings from Italy and Flanders. Salvador Dalí's superb Christ of St John of the Cross is also here. Best of all, nearly everything – including the paintings – has an…
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