Glasgow

Scotland's largest city, confident and Victorian, once styled the Second City of the Empire. Its historic core tells two stories at once: the Merchant City, a grid built on the eighteenth-century fortunes of the Tobacco Lords, wealth entangled with Atlantic slavery that the city now names openly, and an older Glasgow that grew around the medieval cathedral over the shrine of Saint Mungo. West of the centre lies the confident city at leisure and study, the red sandstone palace of Kelvingrove, the University of Glasgow on its hill, and the parks, glasshouses and grand terraces of the West End. Read the trading city and its reckoning at your own pace.