The story of St Machar's Cathedral

A fourteenth-century legend says that Saint Machar, a companion of St Columba, was told to build a church where a river bends in the shape of a bishop's crook before reaching the sea. Look at the River Don just below: it bends exactly that way.

Machar is said to have founded a place of worship here in about 580. A Norman cathedral replaced it in 1131, and today's fortress-like granite church, with its twin spires, grew over the following centuries. It has had no bishop since 1690, so technically it is a 'high kirk'.

The building hides a grim relic: after William Wallace was executed in 1305, his body was cut up and sent around the country as a warning, and his left quarter is said to be buried in these walls. Inside, look up at the magnificent heraldic ceiling of 48 painted coats of arms.