Things to do in Perth and Kinross

Balhousie Castle is located in Hay Street, Perth. The castle standing today is a Baronial style mansion built in 1862. The entrance is located in the tower. Viewed from the east side, you can make out some the original castle stonework. The Castle is the regimental headquarters and museum of the Black Watch. The castle was built in 1631 and was the seat of the Earls of Kinnoull. The castle had a walled enclosure with subsidiary buildings and gardens overlooking the North Inch park. The castle fell into disrepair in the early 19th century, and was extensively renovated in 1862-63 and converted to Baronial style by David Smart. No original features survive except for parts of the original walls on the east side. In 1962, the Castle became the regimental headquarters and museum of the Black Watch.

Balvaird Castle is situated on a hilltop in the Ochil Hills. Balvaird is a traditional late Scottish tower house, built around the year 1500 for Sir Andrew Murray. It is likely that Balvaird Castle was built on the site of an earlier castle. Balvaird has some fine architectural features including corbels supporting the corner-roundels of the wall-walk. The kitchen is on the ground floor, and there is a pit prison within the wall. The accommodation has a number of rooms in the main block and wing with the main staircase between them. Accommodation on the first floor extends over the gatehouse. There is a walkway around the main block at roof level, with a lookout tower at the top of the main staircase. The Castle is now owned by Historic Scotland who have done some restoration work. The site is open to the public, but the tower-house is only open on summer weekends A gatehouse was built in 1567 with an outer courtyard was attached to the main gate Another courtyard was a added to the south was a garden, and a large walled garden was built to the north-east. The Murray family continued to live at Balvaird until 1658 when they moved to Scone Palace, near Perth. The castle continued to be inhabited, but not by its owners.

Access is via the Blairgowrie to Braemar road A93, then turn left at The Post Office on to the Bridge of Cally to Pitlochry road A924. Blackcraig Castle is located about 2 miles from Bridge of Cally near Blairgowrie. Blackcraig Castle is designated as a Class A listed building. The castle has its own gardens beside the River Ardle. Blackcraig Castle offers accommodation in antiqued rooms, and traditional Scottish country home-style cooking. Lady Jill Mueller has had a watercolor painting class at Blackcraig Castle and has been teaching there once or twice a summer since 1993. The original castle was a 16th century tower house and was the seat of the Barony of Balmachreuchie. The tower was extended and renovated in about 1856 by Patrick Alan Fraser, and a gatehouse was added. The extension blends in well, although you can see the different stone work between the original tower and the 19th century modifications.

Blair Castle is located about 8 miles from Pitlochry in Highland Perthshire and is the seat of the Dukes and Earls of Atholl. It was one of the first private homes to open to the public in Scotland. Much of the current building was built in 18th century and it is more of a palace than a castle now. There are about 30 rooms open to the public. Inside the castle is a display of arms and armour, and collections of fine pictures, furniture, porcelain, embroidery, Masonic regalia and family memorabilia. The first castle building was a single tower built in 1269 by John Cumming of Badenoch. The tower is still there and is the tallest part of the Castle. The castle was redeveloped and extended in the medieval, Georgian and Victorian eras. Blair Castle was captured by Oliver Cromwell's army in 1652. The Jacobites besieged the castle in 1746 before the battle of Culloden. After the Jacobite defeat at Culloden it was occupied by the English.

Burleigh Castle is located just outside the village of Milnathort, 1.5 miles north of Kinross, in Perth and Kinross. The castle was built in the 15th century. The castle is in ruins, and the remains include the western part of a square courtyard with a tower house in the north-west corner. The tower house is still standing with three storeys and a garret. The walls are five feet thick with corbels at the top which would once have supported a parapet walk. The vaulted basement of the tower remains but roof and internal floors are gone. The stair in the north-east corner would have led to a caphouse giving access to the parapet walk. There is another tower in the south-west that was built in the 16th century. It is two storeys high with a basement and still has its roof in place. The tower is round at the base, and corbelled out to a square upper storey. The date 1582 is engraved in the north gable. The two towers are connected by a section of curtain wall with an arched gate, that would have once fronted a gatehouse. Burleigh Castle tower house was built in the late 15th century by the Balfour family and extended in the 16th century with addition of a curtain wall, second tower, and other outbuildings. In the 18th century, Robert Balfour joined the Jacobite cause, proclaiming the Old Pretender, James Stuart king at Lochmaben, and fighting in the 1715 rising. Following the defeat of the Jacobites, Balfour was stripped of his property and fled to France. The castle was forfeit to the Irwins, then passed to the Grahams of Kinross. It is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of Historic Scotland.

Castle Menzies near Aberfeldy in Perthshire is a magnificent sixteenth-century Z-plan tower house and the clan seat of the Menzies family, one of the finest and best-preserved examples of Z-plan castle architecture in Scotland. Built around 1571 and extended in the seventeenth century, the castle's plan with main rectangular block and two diagonally placed flanking towers allowed flanking fire to cover all faces of the building. The castle has strong Jacobite associations as the place where Bonnie Prince Charlie rested for two nights in February 1746 during his retreat from Stirling. The castle is in the care of the Menzies Clan Society following significant restoration work, and the surrounding Breadalbane landscape with Loch Tay and the mountains of Glen Lyon is among the most beautiful in Perthshire.

Craighall Castle near Blairgowrie in Perthshire is a historic house of considerable antiquity and picturesque character set on a dramatic clifftop position above the gorge of the River Ericht, incorporating medieval fabric within a structure substantially remodelled and extended over the centuries. The cliff-edge setting above the wooded gorge is one of the most dramatic of any castle site in Perthshire, with the river visible far below through the trees and the steep valley sides enclosing the castle on its rocky promontory. The castle has been associated with the Reid and Murray families and remains a private residence. The area around Blairgowrie in the Tay valley is one of the most scenically attractive parts of Perthshire, celebrated for soft fruit growing and as a gateway to the Cairngorms.

Dalnaglar Castle near Cray in Perthshire is a nineteenth-century Scottish Baronial shooting lodge in an upland glen of the southern Cairngorms above Glenshee, built in the Victorian period when Highland sporting estates became fashionable retreats for wealthy visitors attracted by deer stalking and grouse shooting. Its turreted baronial architecture typifies the Victorian Highland lodge tradition, simultaneously evoking Scottish historical associations and providing comfortable accommodation for sporting parties. The surrounding landscape of the Glenshee uplands is one of the most spectacular in Perthshire, with the Glenshee Ski Centre at the head of the glen providing winter sports. The A93 road over the Glenshee pass is one of the most dramatically scenic roads in Scotland and the highest main road pass in Britain, connecting Blairgowrie to Braemar in Royal Deeside.

Drummond Castle south of Crieff in Perthshire is celebrated above all for its extraordinary formal gardens, widely regarded as among the finest in Scotland and among the best examples of formal garden design in Britain. The castle dates from the fifteenth century as a Drummond family stronghold, largely destroyed by Cromwell's forces and subsequently rebuilt. The gardens, first laid out in the seventeenth century and substantially redesigned in the nineteenth, form a magnificent parterre arranged on terraces descending from the castle, featuring topiary, clipped yews, geometric plantings and a seventeenth-century sundial as the centrepiece. Viewed from the terrace below the castle, the scale and formal complexity of the garden creates one of Scotland's most spectacular garden compositions, open to the public on certain days during the season.

Elcho Castle near Perth is a remarkably well-preserved sixteenth-century Wemyss family fortified house above the south bank of the River Tay, one of the finest examples of a Z-plan Scottish tower house and a property in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. The walls stand to their full height with intact turrets, and the castle preserves a particularly interesting array of gunloops and shot-holes representing the adaptation of Scottish castle architecture to the age of firearms. The quality and completeness of the surviving fabric makes Elcho an exceptional survival of mid-sixteenth-century Scottish domestic and military architecture. The setting on the Tay with views across the fertile Carse of Gowrie toward Dundee and the Angus hills is one of the most attractive of any castle in Perthshire.

Evelick Castle near Errol in the Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire, is a ruined tower house associated with the Meldrum and later Charteris families, standing in the flat alluvial landscape of the Tay valley on the edge of the Sidlaw Hills. The Carse of Gowrie is one of the most productive agricultural areas in Scotland, its deep alluvial soils supporting orchards, soft fruit farms and high-quality arable crops. The castle ruins are now considerably reduced with only portions of walls visible above the farmland. The area forms part of the broader heritage corridor of the Tay valley extending from Perth to Dundee, encompassing numerous historic houses, churches and estate buildings within a consistently scenic river valley landscape.

Fingask Castle near Errol in Perthshire is a sixteenth-century tower house with exceptionally remarkable formal gardens set above the Carse of Gowrie with views across the Tay estuary toward Dundee and the Angus hills. The castle has been the home of the Threipland family for many generations and carries strong Jacobite associations: Patrick Threipland sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden, resulting in temporary forfeiture of the estate. The gardens are celebrated for their whimsical topiary figures and formal hedging giving them one of the most distinctive and individual characters of any castle garden in Scotland, and the estate is occasionally open to visitors for garden events and guided tours.

Huntingtower Castle is located about 3 miles north west of Perth in central Scotland, on the main road to Crieff. The original castle was the three storey Eastern Tower (originally called the Huntingtower). The Eastern Tower was originally built as a gatehouse and was converted to a residential tower house around 1500. The Western Tower was added around the end of the 15th century with a gap of about 3 metres between them. The Western Tower was L-shaped in plan and connected to the Huntingtower by a wooden bridge below the level of the battlements. The space between the two towers was built up later in the 17th century. A great hall was built against the north side of the Western Tower in the 16th century, but nothing remains of it above ground. The defensive walls that originally enclosed the Castle have disappeared. There are a number of early 16th century paintings on the first floor of the Eastern Tower depicting flowers, animals and Biblical scenes. The Eastern Tower has a decorated wooden ceiling showing grotesque animals. This painted ceiling is one of the earliest of its kind to survive in Scotland. Huntingtower Castle was built in the 15th century by the Clan Ruthven and was known for several hundred years as Ruthven Castle. During 1582 the Ruthvens kidnapped the young King James VI, son of Mary Queen of Scots and held him prisoner at the castle for 10 months. This kidnapping is known as the "Raid of Ruthven". James eventually escaped and Ruthven was eventually executed and Ruthven Castle was forfeited to the crown. The Castle and lands were restored to the Ruthven family in 1586. However in 1600, the Ruthvens were again implicated in another plot to kill King James VI and were executed. This time, the king abolished the name of Ruthven and the House of Ruthven ceased to exist. The castle was then renamed Huntingtower. The Castle remained in the possession of the crown until 1643 when it was given to the Murray family. The castle began to fall into disrepair in the late 18th century. Huntingtower Castle is now in the care of Historic Scotland. It is open to the public and can be used as a venue for weddings. Legends Huntingtower is said to be haunted by "Lady Greensleeves", a young woman named Dorothea, daughter of the 1st Earl of Gowrie. The legend says she used to have secret meetings at night in the eastern tower with a servant boyfriend. One night the Countess discovered what was going on and made her way across the bridge from the family quarters in the western tower to the eastern tower to catch the pair. Dorothea heard her mother on the bridge and made her way to the roof. She leapt several metres from the east tower to the battlements of the west tower and rushed back to bed where here mother found her. The following day the couple eloped...

Kinnaird Castle in Perthshire near Inchture in the Carse of Gowrie is the seat of the Carnegie family, Earls of Southesk, with origins on the site traceable to at least the medieval period when the Kinnaird family built the original castle. The present building is a substantial Scottish Baronial mansion of the nineteenth century set within extensive parkland and estate grounds above the flat agricultural landscape of the Carse. The Carnegie family have been associated with Kinnaird since the seventeenth century and the estate remains in private family ownership. The Carse of Gowrie below the castle is one of the most productive agricultural areas in Scotland, celebrated for its orchards, raspberries and the exceptional quality of its alluvial soils.

Lochleven Castle is located on an island in Loch Leven and can be reached by ferry. The Castle can be reached by a ferry boat operated from Kinross by Historic Scotland during the summer months. The 14th-century tower house is still largely complete and dominates the castle ruins. The interior has kitchen and service accommodation in the bottom two floors and living space above. The floor above the hall served as Mary's prison and visitors can stand in the rooms that served as her cell. The original entrance is 5m above ground level, and gave access directly into the hall on the third floor. The smaller 16th-century Glassin Tower is a residential tower attached to the enclosure wall. The Castle originally took up almost the entire area of the Island. The present larger Island was formed in the early 19th century when canal building lowered level of the Loch. The ferry is not equipped to carry passengers in wheelchairs. Access to the castle forecourt, courtyards and gardens is over grass and accessible for visitors using wheelchairs or with limited mobility. The Glassin and Main Towers are not accessible due to flights of stairs. Loch Leven Castle is situated on an island in Loch Leven. The original castle on the island may have been built as early as the late 13th century. The surviving enclosure wall may incorporate parts of this first castle. Loch Leven Castle was captured by the Scots by the end of the 13th century (possibly by the forces of William Wallace). King Robert Bruce visited the castle in 1313 and 1323. Following Bruce's death, it was besieged by English forces in support of Edward Balliol. The Castle was strengthened in the early-mid 14th century either by King Robert I or King David II. A tower house was added in the shape of a square keep five storeys tall. In 1372, the Castle was granted to William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas by King Robert II. Mary Queen of Scots first visited in 1561 as a guest of the owner, Sir William Douglas. A few years later, she was later imprisoned by Douglas in the castle tower in 1567. She eventually escaped in May 1568 after being forced to sign abdication papers in favour of her infant son, James VI. She went into exile in England and never returned to Scotland. Her cousin Queen Elizabeth of England imprisoned her until Mary was eventually executed in 1587. In 1675 Loch Leven Castle was bought from the Douglases by Sir William Bruce. Bruce did not us it as a residence but continued to maintain it along with the gardens. Loch Leven Castle has been a ruin since the 18th century.