Bishop's Castle

Bishop's Castle — also known as Glasgow Castle — stood at the heart of medieval Glasgow and served for centuries as the seat of the city's bishops and, later, its archbishops. Its history ended sharply with the Scottish Reformation: around 1560, the last Catholic Archbishop James Beaton fled to France, taking the cathedral archives and church treasury with him. By the late 18th century the entire structure had been demolished to make way for Glasgow Royal Infirmary, one of Scotland's first modern hospitals. No masonry survives above ground today. The site is a quiet marker of the sweeping urban redevelopment that erased nearly all of Glasgow's medieval built fabric.