Glasgow - Elizabeth Williamson

Glasgow has a wide array of architectural treasures: the greatest medieval cathedral in Scotland; fragments of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century 'merchant city'; the well-preserved heart of a planned new town, Blythswood; a city centre dense with Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings; stately nineteenth-century terraces lining the Great Western Road and picturesquely crowning Woodlands Hill; opulent villas in suburbs like Pollokshields and Kelvinside; and streets of tenements from the workaday to the grand. The twentieth century has encircled the city with a broad belt of public housing, and this too has a fascinating history that encompasses garden suburbs, early experiments in high-rise, comprehensive redevelopments and new interpretations of the tenement tradition. Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander 'Greek' Thomson are, of course, internationally known, but the exceptional talents of Glasgow's many other architects, such as Charles Wilson, James Salmon Jr. and Jack Coia, have helped to shape the city's distinctive character.