Scotland has five UNESCO World Heritage sites chosen for their cultural or natural importance to the whole world. Some are easy to see on a short trip to Scotland. Reaching out to others, like Orkney and St Kilda, are true travel adventures, but they pay you for your time and effort with extraordinary rewards. Plan an itinerary around these special places to turn a visit to Scotland into an unforgettable trip.
Fourth bridge
The Forth Bridge is Scotland’s newest World Heritage site, achieving the distinction in July 2015, just in time for its 125th birthday. Spanning the estuary of the River Forth, about nine miles west of Edinburgh in South Queensferry, the railway bridge was the world’s first multi-space cantilever bridge. At 2,529 meters (approximately 1.57 miles) it remains one of the longest bridges of its kind.
The bridge was opened in 1890, approximately when trains were taking over the market for long-distance travel. Its UNESCO listing states:
“Its distinctive industrial aesthetic is the result of a direct and unadorned display of its structural components. Innovative in style, materials and scale, the Forth Bridge is an important milestone in bridge design and construction… »
How to see the Forth bridge
- On foot: Trails on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, around South Queensferry and the north shore of North Queensferry offer good views of the bridge, one of Scotland’s iconic symbols. If visiting Edinburgh, climb up to Arthur’s Seat or Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park for a long-distance view.
- On the Bridge : Plans are underway to create two new visitor experiences on the bridge. A visitor center at North Queensferry will include an outdoor elevator to an observation deck at the top of the north tower. Guided walks from a hub in South Queensferry will take thrill seekers on a hike to the top of the South Tower. You can watch various videos and keep up to date with developments from The Forth Bridge Experience here.
- By Boat : Forth Tours runs regularly scheduled boat trips in the Firth that pass under the bridge from a pier in South Queensferry. They also have a bus to boat service leaving from central Edinburgh. The Maid of the Forth operates a ferry service to Inchorn Island in the middle of the Firth that also offers good views of the bridge.
The fourth bridge in history
The bridge is painted with a bright orange anti-rust coating. It takes 10 years to paint the bridge and in the past, as soon as painters finished at one end, they had to start over at the other. So in the British language, it is said that a never-ending task is like painting the Forth Bridge.
However, that is no longer true. When the painters last completed their 10-year assignment, in 2011, National Rail, guardians of the bridge, said that new paints and paint technology meant the bridge could be free of painters’ scaffolding and fabrics during 20 years.
St Kilda
In 1930, the entire population of St Kilda (all 36) left the inhabited island of this remote archipelago, 110 miles west of Scotland, for the mainland. That was the end of a village that had existed for at least 1,000 years. Other evidence from the island showed that people had been using the island for almost 4,000 years.
St Kilda is one of the rare UNESCO World Heritage sites that is inscribed on the list for its cultural and natural value. In 1986 it became the first World Heritage Site in Scotland. In 2005 it joined an elite group of a few dozen on the list for its cultural and natural significance. In 2013 it was moved to Outstanding Universal Value status, reserved for what UNESCO considers the most remarkable places in the world.
Why St Kilda?
- Culturally, World Heritage status will help protect evidence of at least “two millennia of human occupation in extreme conditions.” The islanders practiced a subsistence economy of raising sheep, collecting bird products, and caring for the land. Evidence of his abandoned village, with its sheep pens and cleits (dry stone storage buildings) still stands above St Kilda’s only harbor in Hirta.
- The group of islands was formed by ancient volcanic action, glaciers and erosion producing exceptional landscapes and spectacular sea stacks. Most of St. Kilda is almost vertical.
- The wildlife and biodiversity on the islands are a good reason to visit. More than 1 million seabirds use the islands to nest and make migratory stops, especially puffins, gannets and fulmars. The islands are also home to wild Soay sheep, an ancient breed that may have been brought there by the early settlers of St Kilda thousands of years ago.
- Even the underwater landscape and biodiversity are included in the World Heritage list.
Get to St Kilda …
… It is not an easy task. You can book a cruise to the island, but whether you will be able to land depends on the weather and the tides, there is no guarantee. Read our report on a trip to St Kilda.
To get an idea of how difficult life was for the original islanders, visit the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, where they maintain a ‘Jollyboat’, one of the last rowboats that the islanders used to transport supplies, mail and tourists to a Steamboat.
Edinburgh Old and New Cities
The capital of Scotland and the seat of its new Parliament, it combines the young and modern feel of a large university city and national capital with a historic and dramatic setting. It celebrates the largest performing arts festival in the world, has a 1,000-year-old castle and a mountain, Arthur’s Seat, right in the center of the city.
The city, the Scottish capital since the 15th century, is divided into two distinct areas: a Georgian and neoclassical New Town with wide avenues and landscaped squares and the Old Town, crowned by the medieval fortress known as Edinburgh Castle.
The UNESCO list notes that the harmonious position of the two areas gives the city its unique character and, praising Edinburgh’s ‘far-reaching influence on urban planning’, it says:
“The contrast between the organic medieval old town and the planned new Georgian town of Edinburgh, Scotland, provides a clarity of urban structure unmatched in Europe.”
Princes Street Gardens
A park, with hills, valleys and forests, known as Princes Street Gardens, separates the old and new cities of Edinburgh and provides a setting for the neoclassical galleries of the Scottish National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy. It is seen, for everyone, as a natural landscape, at once with the hills of Edinburgh and its spectacular Castle Rock.
In fact, it is completely man-made, formed by the Nor Loch drainage, itself a man-made lake, which had been part of the castle’s defenses. The gardens and the hill known as The Mound were created from more than a million wheelbarrows laden with loot excavated during the construction of the New Town.
New Lanark
New Lanark was the brainchild of the 19th century utopian idealist Robert Owen. The purpose-built mill factory, founded in 1785 by Owen’s father-in-law, was already a thriving textile mill with water-powered cotton mills and some worker housing when Owen took over its operation in the early 1800s. It was, even then, the largest collection of industrial buildings in the world.
Owen decided to apply his radical theories of benevolent paternalism to create a model industrial village with a humane environment, decent, healthy housing, education and cultural enhancement for workers, landscaped areas and, for the moment, decent working conditions. The planning and architecture were designed for the well-being of the workers, considered “a milestone in social and industrial history” with a lasting influence ever since. According to the UNESCO inscription:
“New Lanark is a unique reminder that wealth creation does not automatically degrade its producers. The village … was the testing ground for ideas seeking to improve the human condition around the world … and the economic systems that Owen developed were considered radical in his own time, but are now widely accepted in modern society.
After New Lanark
Owen went on to found the utopian community of New Harmony, Indiana, according to New Lanark directors. But, without the unifying purpose of Scotland’s thriving textile mills, it failed as a viable economic endeavor within two years. The New Lanark factories were sold several times, eventually becoming a wardrobe before finally closing in the 1960s. The water-wheel mills continued to operate from 1786 to 1968. Perhaps because of this, they survived relatively unchanged into the 21st century. .
New Lanark today
The mill buildings, the housing designed for the workers, the educational institute and the school remain a demonstration of the illustrated owner and employer from the early 19th century. The site was inscribed on the World Heritage register in 2001.
The New Lanark Trust, a registered Scottish charity, maintains the World Heritage site with the aim of preserving it as ‘a sustainable community, with a resident population and new employment opportunities’.
Much of the site is open to visitors throughout the year, with a variety of exhibits and attractions to view from the Visitor Center. The site includes a hotel in one of the mill buildings and a hostel in an old residential building, a village shop and a textile shop, and meeting rooms for concerts, conferences and exhibitions. One of the resident buildings, known as The Double Row, whose parts were in continuous occupation until 1970, is being restored for residential use.
Visit their website for hours and prices.
Heart of the Neolithic Orkney
Visitors to Orkney are immediately amazed by the huge concentration of mysterious prehistoric structures that dot the islands. Some are over 5,000 years old, predating Stonehenge and the Pyramids by several thousand years. The site includes two very different stone circles, The Standing Stones of Stenness and The Ring of Brodgar; a chamber mound filled with Viking runes from a later period, Maeshowe; a 5,000-year-old town, Skara Brae, and several mounds and unexcavated sites.
The monuments that make up the World Heritage site are considered the most important of the Neolithic period in Western Europe. The 5,000-year-old town of Skara Brae, remarkably intact, was only discovered in the 19th century when a violent storm swept away the sand that had covered it for millennia. It is considered the best preserved Neolithic settlement in the world. First inscribed on the list in 1999, the site was subsequently elevated to Outstanding Universal Value status. The UNESCO listing said:
«The monuments of Orkney bear unique or exceptional testimony to an important indigenous cultural tradition that flourished for 500-1,000 years but disappeared around 2000 BC… They are testimony to the cultural achievements of the Neolithic peoples of Northern Europe, during the period 3000 -2000 BC C. «
New excavations of a major ritual or ceremonial center on a stretch of land known as The Ness of Brodgar are adding even more knowledge and evidence of the ancient Orkney people. They can be visited during scheduled summer archaeological excavations. The best way to visit any of Orkney’s ancient monuments is in the company of one of the island’s guides or archaeologists.
