St Magnus Cathedral

Founded in 1137 and built out of local red sandstone and yellow Eday stone, fabulous St Magnus Cathedral is Kirkwall’s centrepiece. The powerful atmosphere of an ancient faith pervades the impressive interior. During summer, 40-minute tours of the cathedral’s upper levels start at 11am and 2pm on Tuesday and Thursday and cost £6 per person.

Earl Rognvald Brusason commissioned the cathedral in the name of his martyred uncle, Magnus Erlendsson, who was killed by Earl Hakon Paulsson on Egilsay in 1117. Work began in 1137, but the building is actually the result of 300 years of construction and alteration. The bones of St Magnus and St Rognvald are interred in the rectangular pillars in the middle of the cathedral.

At the far end of the south aisle is a splendid monument to Dr John Rae, the Arctic explorer, depicting him carelessly sprawled in sleep, wrapped in animal furs and wearing native moccasins, a book and shotgun by his side. There's also a memorial to William Balfour Baikie, a missionary who explored much of the Congo River, and the bell from the HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed and sunk in Scapa Flow during WWII with the loss of 833 crewmembers.

Between the knave and the apse, the cathedral walls are lined with medieval gravestones carved with hourglasses, coffins, skulls and crossbones, and other poignant symbols of mortality (the stones have never been exposed to the elements and are probably the best-preserved medieval slabs in Scotland). Hanging in the northern aisle is a sinister 17th-century Mort Brod, a wooden grave marker bearing an image of the grim Reaper.