Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sights & Activities
City Centre
Union St
is the city's main thoroughfare, lined with solid, Victorian granite buildings. The
oldest area is
Castlegate
, at the eastern end, where the castle once stood. When it was
captured from the English for Robert the Bruce, the password used by the townspeople
was 'Bon Accord', which is now the city's motto.
bearing a sculpted frieze of portraits of Stuart monarchs. The Baronial heap towering over
was modelled on Balmoral Castle.
On the northern side of Union St, 300m west of Castlegate, is
St Nicholas Church
Offline map
Google map
,
the so-called 'Mither Kirk' (Mother Church) of Aberdeen. The
granite spire dates from the 19th century, but there has been a church on this site since the
12th century; the early 15th-century
St Mary's Chapel
survives in the eastern part of the
church.
MUSEUM
Aberdeen Maritime Museum
(
01224-337700;
www.aagm.co.uk
; Shiprow; 10am-5pm Tue-Sat, noon-3pm Sun)
Overlooking the nautical bustle of Aberdeen harbour is the Maritime Museum. Centred on
a three-storey replica of a North Sea oil production platform, it explains all you ever
wanted to know about the petroleum industry. Other galleries, some situated in
Provost
Ross's House
, the oldest building in the city and part of the museum, cover the shipbuild-
ing, whaling and fishing industries. Sleek and speedy Aberdeen clippers were a 19th-cen-
tury shipyard speciality, used by British merchants for the importation of tea, wool and
exotic goods (opium, for instance) to Britain, and, on the return journey, the transportation
of emigrants to Australia.
ART MUSEUM
Aberdeen Art Gallery
(
01224-523700;
www.aagm.co.uk
; Schoolhill; 10am-5pm Tue-Sat, 2-5pm Sun)
Be-
hind the grand facade of Aberdeen Art Gallery is a cool, marble-lined space exhibiting the
work of contemporary Scottish and English painters, such as Gwen Hardie, Stephen Con-
