Perth

Bells, River and Inches

St John's Kirk has 63 bells, which is more than any other church in the British Isles. Eight are pre-Reformation and one is a bourdon cast by Peter Waghevens in 1506. The kirk itself is a fifteenth-century rebuild, its central tower modelled on St Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen, and it gave the town its older name — St Johnstoun, which is also why the football club is called St Johnstone rather than Perth.

The Tay runs north to south straight through the middle of everything. It is Scotland's longest river, four bridges cross it, and it has flooded the town repeatedly for as long as there has been a town to flood. On either side of it are two large parks, the North Inch and the South Inch, gifted to Perth in 1377 by King Robert III and still parkland with paths and playgrounds beside the water.

Perth's Real-Ale and Live-Music Pubs

For a pub, Greyfriars Bar is the one the real-ale drinkers point you to — described as the only dedicated real ale pub in the town, in a B-listed late-eighteenth-century building named after a monastery that John Knox's followers gutted in 1559.

The Twa Tams, at 79–81 Scott Street, is the live-music one. It opened in November 1975 in a former army commandant's house, founded by two local men both middle-named Thomas, which is where the name comes from. Belle and Sebastian, Travis, Frightened Rabbit and KT Tunstall have all played there. There are gigs two or three nights a week and a Sunday-afternoon open mic.

More Pubs and a City Deli

The Glover Arms keeps two real ales on tap, usually Deuchars plus a guest, and takes its name from Catherine Glover, the Fair Maid of Scott's novel. The Maltings has a covered patio and a range of cask ales.

For food to take back, Provender Brown at 23 George Street is the longest-standing deli and cheesemonger in the city centre, run by Ed Murdoch and Elle Whitby, stocking over 2,000 items — cheese, organic meat, wine, whisky, olives, pâté, and lunches made on the premises.

Kinnoull Hill and Perth's Crossroads

The walking starts more or less from the door. Kinnoull Hill is a mile and a half east, 728 feet up, and a circular of about 4.7 kilometres climbs through beech and pine to a clifftop escarpment with views up the Tay valley to the Highlands. On the cliff edge sits Kinnoull Tower, a folly built by the Earl of Kinnoull because the crags reminded him of the Rhine.

Perth was made a Royal Burgh in the early twelfth century and served for a time as a capital of Scotland — the gateway between Lowland and Highland, where the A9, A85, A93 and A90 still meet and the M90 runs out. The station, built in 1848, has direct trains to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Aberdeen. In 1396 thirty men of Clan Chattan fought thirty of a rival clan on the North Inch, in front of King Robert III; twenty-nine of one side died.

The Stone of Destiny Returns

The Stone of Destiny came home in 2024. Used to inaugurate Scots kings at nearby Scone from 1249, taken by Edward I in 1296 and kept at Westminster for the better part of seven centuries, it now sits in the new Perth Museum, a few miles from where it started.