Stirling Castle
Stirling Castle stands on a volcanic crag above the city of Stirling at the geographical and strategic heart of Scotland, a castle of extraordinary historical importance that controlled the lowest crossing of the River Forth for centuries and was consequently the pivot on which the history of medieval Scotland turned with a frequency matched by no other site in the country. The castle's command of the route between the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands made it the key to Scotland during the Wars of Independence and the subsequent centuries of Scottish political history, and its walls witnessed some of the most significant events in Scottish national life.
The castle is built on the same type of volcanic plug that supports Edinburgh Castle, its sheer rock faces providing natural defensibility on three sides that was exploited in every period from the Iron Age onward. The surviving fabric is primarily of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the castle served as the principal residence of the Stuart royal house and was developed on a lavish scale befitting a major European court. The Great Hall, built for James IV around 1503, is the largest secular medieval building in Scotland and was recently restored to its original appearance with limewashed exterior and medieval windows. The Royal Palace, built by James V in the 1540s, is decorated with the finest Renaissance sculpture programme in Scotland, including the extraordinary carved stone figures that have been restored to their original positions on the exterior walls.
The castle is associated with the coronation of Mary Queen of Scots as an infant in 1543 and her subsequent childhood at the castle under the regency of the Earl of Arran. The battles of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and Bannockburn in 1314, both fought within sight of the castle, represent the decisive Scottish victories in the Wars of Independence that secured Scottish independence for three centuries.