Dundee City Centre
Dundee's city centre is focused on City Square, a few hundred yards north of the Tay.
This attractive square, set in front of the city's imposing Caird Hall, has been much spruced up in recent years, with fountains, benches and extensive pedestrianisation making for a relaxing environment.
The main street, which is pedestrianised as it passes City Square, starts as Nethergate in the west, becomes High Street in the centre, then divides into Murraygate (which is also pedestrianised) and Seagate. Opposite this junction is the mottled spire of St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, a rather gaudy Gothic Revival structure, notable for its vividly sentimental stained glass and floridly gilded high altar. Immediately in front of the cathedral is a recently erected statue to one of the city's heroes, Admiral Duncan of Camperdown, who defeated a Dutch fleet not far off the coast from here during the Napoleonic wars in one of the more critical naval encounters of the that period not involving Nelson.
At the other old church in the centre, St Mary's, now engulfed by the vast Overgate Shopping Centre, is an attraction called The Old Steeple. At the top you step out onto a parapet that offers great views over the city and the Tay with its bridges.
A hundred yards north of City Square, at the top of Reform Street, is the attractive Albert Square, home of the imposing D.C. Thomson building, Dundee High School and, on its eastern side, the McManus Art Galleries and Museum, the city's most impressive Victorian structure and home to some notable Pre-Raphaelite and Scottish collections, William McTaggart's seascapes being a particular highlight.
Across Ward Road from the museum, the Howff Burial Ground on Meadowside has some great carved tombstones dating from the 16th to 19th centuries. Five minutes' walk west of here, on West Henderson Wynd in Blackness, an award-winning museum, Verdant Works, tells the story of jute from its harvesting in India to its arrival in Dundee on clipper ships The museum, set in an old jute mill, makes a lively attempt to recreate the turn-of-the-century factory floor, the highlight being the chance to watch jute being processed on fully operational quarter-size machines originally used for training workers.
