Look to your right for a big red-sandstone castle-like building with chunky round and square towers and battlements, perched high on a green slope above the River Ness.
Now, let’s set the scene: you’re standing below Inverness Castle, where the river glints like a moving mirror and the wind tends to arrive uninvited. This cliff has been a power spot since 1057, when the first castle is said to have been raised in the days of Malcolm III. And ever since, this hill has had the same job description: keep watch, keep order, and occasionally-let’s be honest-cause a bit of trouble.
In the medieval world, castles weren’t just strongholds; they were statements. And this one has been rewritten again and again. In 1307, Robert the Bruce wasn’t in the mood for subtlety-he had the battlements smashed down, as if to say, “No one’s getting too comfortable up here.” Later, in 1428, King James I decided the Highland chiefs needed… “a chat.” He summoned around fifty clan leaders to meet him here. Picture the great doors, the echo of boots on stone, and the polite smiles. Then-click-one by one they were arrested, clapped in irons, and shut away in separate rooms so they couldn’t coordinate. Some were executed on the spot. It’s one of those moments where “royal invitation” turns out to mean “royal ambush.” One of the prisoners, Alexander Lord of the Isles, eventually came back with a reported 10,000 men and burned the town-yet still couldn’t take the castle. Even when Inverness was on fire, this rock kept its crown.
Then comes my favourite episode: Mary, Queen of Scots, arriving in August 1562. Imagine her progress into town-velvet, horses, banners-and the castle gates bluntly refusing her entry because the Gordon family were playing hardball. Wrong move. Clans loyal to Mary-especially the Frasers and Munros-rallied to her side, took the castle for their queen, and the governor who shut her out was hanged. That’s Inverness for you: the weather changes quickly, and so does your luck.
What you see today, though, is a 19th-century reinvention. This red sandstone beauty was finished in 1836, designed in a deliberately “castle-ish” style-battlements, towers, the whole romantic drama-because civic buildings in that era liked to dress up as fortresses. It served as county buildings and courts, and the north block was even used as a prison. Law and order, with a medieval costume on.
And if you think it’s all stone and seriousness, the castle once had a little artillery fashion show out front-captured field guns displayed like trophies. During the Second World War they were sold for scrap for just £25, roughly about £1,400 today (around $1,800). One of the wrong guns was accidentally scrapped first-an oops that echoes through history like a dropped gavel.
It’s also had a glamorous afterlife: it appears on the back of a Royal Bank of Scotland £50 note, and in popular culture it’s forever tangled up with Shakespeare’s Macbeth-murder, ambition, and all that sleepless Scottish guilt.
When you’re set, Royal Northern Infirmary is a 13-minute walk heading south.
