Glasgow

A red sandstone building puts stuffed animals and European paintings under one roof, and admission is free. Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross is the signature piece. The central hall's pipe organ gives a recital most days, Sundays in the afternoon.

One of the few medieval cathedrals on mainland Scotland that kept its roof through the Reformation. Down in the lower church, the tomb of St Mungo, the city's patron saint, sits among the pillars. Many leave having seen only the upper floor.

A Victorian cemetery covers the hill behind the cathedral, merchant families buried under temples and obelisks. The John Knox column crowns the top, with the cathedral roof below your feet. The paths are steep and slippery when wet.

Zaha Hadid's zigzag-roofed building is packed with trams, steam locomotives and bicycles, and entry is free. Inside is a life-size street of old Glasgow. The tall ship Glenlee is moored on the river behind the building, and you can climb up onto its deck.

Founded in 1451, the university moved to the Gothic main building on the hill in the 19th century. Below it the cloisters are a passage of pillars and arches, and someone is always there with a camera. The Hunterian Museum inside takes no ticket.

Shipowner William Burrell gave his collection to the city, and it sits in the woods of Pollok Country Park. After years closed for refurbishment it reopened in 2022, free to enter. Shaggy Highland cattle graze the meadow, and some kids come for them instead.

Someone keeps an orange traffic cone on the head of the horseback statue outside the Gallery of Modern Art. The council has tried clearing it, but by the next day it is back, and it has become a face of the city. The gallery behind is free.

Opened in 1896, it is the oldest underground railway after London and Budapest, and it runs a single loop. The cars are small with low ceilings, so tall riders duck at the doors. Pick the Inner or Outer Circle, whichever way round is shorter.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh fitted out this Sauchiehall Street tea room for Kate Cranston in 1903. He drew the chairs, window grilles and lights, and after restoration it reopened as a tea room in 2018. Book ahead, as the upstairs Salon de Luxe fills fast.

By surface area the largest freshwater loch in Great Britain; trains run from the city to Balloch village at its southern end. Cruise boats leave the Balloch pier and loop between the islands. Midges swarm the summer shore, so pack repellent.

Free botanic gardens where Great Western Road ends in the West End. The white iron-and-glass Kibble Palace began as a businessman's private conservatory and was moved here in 1873. Its round inner chamber holds tree ferns and marble statues.

The city hall fills the east side of George Square; Queen Victoria opened it in 1888. Its marble stairs and mosaic floors have doubled on film for the Vatican and the British Embassy in Moscow. Council-run guided tours show the interior.

An 18th-century mansion in Pollok Country Park, the same park as the Burrell Collection. It hangs Spanish paintings including El Greco and Goya, and the old basement kitchen is now a tearoom. A herd of shaggy Highland cattle grazes the field out front.

A weekend flea market around the Gallowgate in the East End. It grew in the 1920s from the yard where Maggie McIver hired out barrows, and now mixes second-hand clothes, bric-a-brac and street food. The Barrowland Ballroom's neon sign marks the spot.

A route linking giant murals on gable ends, with a map from the city. On High Street, St Mungo appears in modern dress cradling a bird. Seeing them all eats half a day, and some hide in places as easy to miss as the back of a car park.

A titanium-clad crescent on Pacific Quay across the Clyde from the SEC. Three floors of hands-on exhibits share the site with a planetarium and an IMAX cinema. Walkers from the SEC side cross by footbridge and arrive almost at once.

A cotton-spinning village built in 1786 in a gorge of the upper Clyde, listed by UNESCO. Robert Owen tested workers' schooling and better living here. Take the train to Lanark, then a bus; the woodland path above the village leads to the Falls of Clyde.