Glasgow Vacations, Glasgow Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

Glasgow Vacation Guide

GLASGOW's earliest history, like so much else in this surprisingly romantic city, is obscured in a swirl of myth. The city's name is said to derive from the Celtic Glas-cu, which loosely translates as "the dear, green place" – a tag that the tourist board are keen to exploit as an antidote to the sooty images of popular imagination. It is generally agreed that the first settlers arrived in the sixth century to join Christian missionary Kentigern – later to become St Mungo – in his newly founded monastery on the banks of the tiny Molendinar Burn.
But now, Glasgow's industries had been honed into one massive shipbuilding culture. Everything from tugboats to transatlantic liners were fashioned out of sheet metal in the yards that straddled the Clyde. In the harsh economic climate of the 1930s, however, unemployment spiralled, and Glasgow could do little to counter its popular image as a city dominated by inebriate violence and – having absorbed vast numbers of Irish emigrants – sectarian tensions.
Shipbuilding, and many associated industries, died away almost completely in the 1960s and 1970s, leaving the city depressed, jobless and directionless. Then, in the 1980s, the self-promotion campaign began, snowballing towards the 1988 Garden Festival and year-long party as European City of Culture in 1990. More recently, Glasgow was UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999, an event which strove valiantly to showcase the city's rich architectural heritage.