Aberdeen Attractions

Outside your Aberdeen hotel are 17th-century tolbooths and kirks, seaside roller-coaster thrills and sleek bars born of the 1970s oil boom.

Historic Aberdeen

Book an Aberdeen hotel and soak up 16th-century history inside the sweeping neo-Gothic creation Marischal College. Opposite is Provost Skene’s House where Butcher Cumberland stayed on his way to clobber Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden. In the Tolbooth, where the defeated Jacobites were imprisoned, check out the guillotine and rather nasty scold’s bridle.

Art and museums in Aberdeen

Overlooking the busy Aberdeen harbour is the Maritime Museum inside Provost Ross’s House where a giant whale’s ear bone gets equal billing with the newt suit for underwater diving. There are dozens of excellent child-friendly interactive exhibits at Satrosphere Science Centre where you can work out what a pot of paint would weigh on Jupiter.

Quirky things to do in Aberdeen

Kids will be delighted to hear that Aberdeen has a candyfloss-tastic seafront attraction called Codonas Amusement Park where you can scream along the roller-coaster track or inside the ghost train. Storybook Glen off South Deeside Road is a 27-acre kids’ park dotted with more than 100 oversized fairy-tale and nursery rhyme characters.

Events in Aberdeen

Aberdeen stages an annual Highland Games on the third Sunday in June where tug o’war and caber tossing sort the men from the boys.

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