Urquhart Castle
Urquhart Castle stands on a rocky promontory jutting into Loch Ness on the loch's western shore, its ruined towers and curtain walls reflected in the dark water of the longest lake in Britain and providing one of the most dramatically situated and most photographed castle ruins in Scotland. The castle occupies a site of strategic importance at the narrowest point of the Great Glen, the glacial valley that cuts diagonally across the Scottish Highlands from Inverness to Fort William, and successive fortifications have occupied this commanding position for at least a thousand years. The earliest fortification on the site dates from the Iron Age, when the natural defensibility of the promontory above the loch made it an obvious location for a stronghold. The medieval castle that developed from the thirteenth century became one of the largest in Scotland and was repeatedly fought over by the Scottish crown and the MacDonald Lords of the Isles during the bitter territorial disputes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The castle changed hands more times than most, being taken by siege, treachery and force on numerous occasions, and the repeated destruction and rebuilding visible in the surviving fabric reflects this turbulent history. The most intact surviving structure is the Grant Tower, a sixteenth-century keep that still stands to its original height and provides a viewing platform over the loch and the surrounding mountains from its upper level. The views from this vantage point are extraordinary: the length of Loch Ness stretches in both directions through its narrow glen, the distant mountains of the central Highlands visible on clear days at the far end of the water, and the scale of the Highland landscape made tangible by the perspective the height provides. The association with the Loch Ness Monster, perhaps inevitably, draws many visitors to Urquhart who hope that the castle's position above the loch might favour a sighting of the elusive creature. The Loch Ness Centre at Drumnadrochit nearby provides a thorough and reasonably sceptical examination of the legend's history for those wishing to investigate further.