The Buchanan Street defines the main shopping district of Glasgow and runs north-south, west of  George Square. The Princes Square, said to be one among the most imaginative and stylish shopping centres in the country lies to the southern end of the street. The area showcases a large number of fashionable and pricey shops. The Buchanan Galleries is a vast shopping mall which covers an area of 600, 000 square feet.

Buchanan Street to Charing Cross

Glasgow's commercial heart is the area between Buchanan Square and the M8 to the west.

This vast grid-plan - which inspired town planners in the USA - is home to the city's main shopping streets and arcades, as well as its businesses and financial institutions.

It is also where you'll find many of its architectural treasures.

At the bottom (south) end of Buchanan Street is St Enoch Square, dominated by the St Enoch Centre, a gigantic glass-covered complex of shops, fast-food outlets and an ice rink. There's also a subway station and transport centre in the square. St Enoch Square looks onto Argyle Street, one of Glasgow's most famous shopping streets.

Though its status has been usurped in recent decades by the more fashionable streets to the north, it does boast the Argyle Arcade,

Scotland's first ever indoor shopping mall, built in 1827 in Parisian style, at the junction with Buchanan Street.

Argyle Street runs west from here under the railway bridge at Central station. This bridge has always been known as the 'Heilanman's Umbrella', owing to the local joke that Highlanders would stand under it for shelter rather than buy an umbrella.

A short walk north on Buchanan Street is Princes Square, one of the most stylish and imaginative shopping malls in Britain.

Even if you're not buying or looking, it's worth going in to admire this beautifully-ornate Art Nouveau creation, or to sit at the top-floor café and watch others spend their hard-earned cash in the trendy designer clothes shops below.

A little further north, on the opposite side of the street, is a branch of the famous Willow Tea Rooms (see below) with replicas of Mackintosh designs. Almost opposite is Borders Bookshop, housed in the huge and impressive former Royal Bank of Scotland (1827), which backs onto Royal Exchange Square.

The Lighthouse

Lovers of architecture should head west into Gordon Street and then south (left) into Mitchell Street, where you'll find The Lighthouse, another of Glasgow's hidden gems.

It was designed by the ubiquitous Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1893 to house the offices of the Glasgow Herald.

The Herald vacated the premises in 1980 and it lay empty, until its recent transformation into Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, a permanent legacy of the Glasgow's role as UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999.

This stunning 21st century building also contains the Mackintosh Interpretation and Review Gallery, which features original designs and information on the life and work of the great architect.

A 135-step spiral staircase leads to the viewing tower, which affords great views over the city. There's also a shop and café.

Mon, Wed, Fri and Sat 1030-1730, Tue 1100-1700, Thu 1030-1700, Sun 1200-1700. £2.50, £2 concession. (Tel: 2216362).

Buchanan Street north & St Vincent Street

Further north on Buchanan Street, close to Buchanan Street Underground, are two more interesting buildings: St George's Tron Church, designed in 1808 by William Stark and the oldest church in the city centre, and the Athenaeum, designed in 1886 by JJ Burnet and showing early signs of his later modernism.

Running west from George Square, between Argyle Street and Sauchiehall Street, is St Vincent Street, where you'll find two of the city's extraordinary buildings.

The Hatrack, at No 142, was designed in 1902 by James Salmon Jnr. It's a very tall, narrow building, like many in the city centre, with a fantastically-detailed roof which looks like an old hat stand.

Further along St Vincent Street, near the intersection with Pitt Street, is one of the jewels in Glasgow's architectural crown, the St Vincent Street Church, designed in 1859 by Alexander 'Greek' Thomson, the city's "unknown genius" of architecture.

Much of his work was destroyed in the 1960s and this is his only intact Romantic Classical church, now on the World Monument Fund's list of the 100 most endangered sites.

The Presbyterian church is fronted by Ionic columns like those of a Greek temple and the church also shows Egyptian and Assyrian decoration.

The main tower is Grecian in style while the dome could have come straight out of India during the Raj.

A series of streets climb northwards from St Vincent Street up to Sauchiehall Street, another of the city's main shopping thoroughfares.

If there's one thing Glaswegians like to do it's spend money and Glasgow is second only to London in the UK in terms of retail spending.

The newest of the city's shopping centres is the upmarket Buchanan Galleries, next door to the Royal Concert Hall at the north end of Buchanan Street, where it meets the east end of Sauchiehall Street.

Sauchiehall Street

There are a few notable places of interest on Sauchiehall Street, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh's wonderful Willow Tea Rooms, at No 217, above Henderson's the Jewellers.

This is a faithful reconstruction on the site of the original 1903 tea room, designed by CRM for his patron Miss Kate Cranston, who already ran three of the city's most fashionable tea rooms, in Argyle Street, Buchanan Street and Ingram Street.

The tea room was very much peculiar to Glasgow, promoted by the Temperance Movement as a healthy alternative to the gin palaces, popular throughout the country in the late 19th century, and Miss Cranston's were the crème de la crème of tea rooms.

They offered ladies-only rooms, rooms for gentlemen and rooms where both sexes could dine together.

In addition, her tea rooms offered a reading room, a billiards room for the gentlemen and a smoking room, not forgetting the unrivalled splendour of the decoration.

Mackintosh had already worked with Miss Cranston on her other tea rooms, but Sauchiehall Street was their tour de force. Sauchiehall means "alley of the willows" and this theme was reflected not only in the name, but throughout the interior. Mackintosh was allowed free rein to design the fixtures and fittings; everything, in fact, right down to the teaspoons.

The exclusive Salon de Luxe, on the first floor, was the crowning glory, and the most exotic and ambitious part of the tea rooms, decorated in purple, silver and white, with silk and velvet upholstery.

Visitors today can relive the splendour of the original tea rooms as they relax in the distinctive high-backed chairs with a cup of tea, brought to them by the specially selected high-backed waitresses.

The tea rooms are open from 0930 to 1630.

A few yards west, on the opposite side of the street, are the McLellan Galleries, another fine example of classical architecture.

The galleries are currently closed but when they re-open will host a wide of touring and temporary exhibitions.

(To check re-open date call Tel: 3311854). Opening times and admission charges change with each exhibition.

Further down the street, on the same side, is the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), housed in the Grecian Buildings, a former commercial warehouse designed by Alexander 'Greek' Thomson in 1867-68.

The centre presents a changing programme of contemporary theatre, dance and other cultural events.

It also has two excellent café-bars.

Centre open Mon-Sat 0900-2400; Sun 1200-1900. Galleries open Mon-Sat 1100-1800; Sun 1200-1700. Free. (Tel: 3327521).

tury and retains most of the original features such as the bed recesses, kitchen range and coal bunker.

The whole experience is a little voyeuristic, as the flat includes many of Agnes' personal possessions, and in the parlour the table is set for afternoon tea, lending a spooky atmosphere redolent of the Marie Celeste.

On the ground floor is an exhibition on tenement life. The property is owned by the NTS.

1 Mar-31 Oct, daily 1400-1700. £3.50, £2.50 concession. (Tel: 3330183).

On the other side of Cowcaddens Road, behind the huge Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama, is the Piping Centre, at 30-34 McPhater Street.

It's a kind of centre for the promotion of the bagpipes and contains rehearsal rooms, performance spaces and accommodation for aficionados of the instrument which divides opinion so sharply.

There's also a very fine café and a museum which features a collection of antique pipes.

Mon-Sat 1030-1630; Sun in summer. £3, £2 concession.

 

Other Mackintosh buildings

Aside from the Mackintosh buildings listed separately, there are a number of his lesser known works scattered around the city centre.

These include the Martyrs' Public School (1895), at Parson Street, just off the High Street and M8 (open daily 1300-1600, free, Tel: 2878955), the Daily Record Building (1901), at 20-26 Renfield Lane (external viewing only), the Royal Fusiliers Museum (c1903), at 518 Sauchiehall Street (ring for opening times, Tel: 3320961), Ruchill Church Hall, Shakespeare Street (open Monday-Friday 1030-1430, closed July/August, free) and the former Glasgow Society of Lady Artists' Club (1908), at 5 Blythswood Square (external viewing only).

At 870 Garscube Road is Queen's Cross Church, CRM's only church and a fascinating piece of architecture.

Beautifully simple, with echoes of the symbolism of his other buildings, it now functions as the headquarters of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society.

There's an information centre, a small display and a gift shop.

Mon-Fri 1000-1700, Sat 1000-1400, Sun 1400-1700. Tel: 9466600. £2, £1 concession. Contact the CRM Society at the church, Glasgow G20 7EL, (Tel: 9466600, Fax: 9452321), www.crmsociety.com

Buses 21, 61 and 91 from Hope St (west side of Central station), or Underground to St George's Cross and walk 10 mins on Maryhill Rd.

The Tenement House

A few hundred yards northwest of the School of Art, down the other side of the hill, at 145 Buccleuch Street, is the Tenement House, a typical late Victorian tenement flat.

This was the home of Miss Agnes Toward, a shorthand typist, for 50 years until she moved out in 1965.

It's a fascinating time-capsule of life in the first half of the 20th century

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