Scottish Architecture.Melrose Abbey.

The Pictish and Gaelic kingdoms became a united Scotland in the 9th century CE. By the 12th century, King David I was introducing knights, monks and new laws as the country moved into a cutting-edge new era: the late Middle Ages. In 1136, the monks began building Melrose Abbey, which at its peak was an economic as well as a spiritual powerhouse, owning a whopping 15,000 sheep.

But its wealth and Borders location made it vulnerable. It was sacked by the English, rebuilt by Robert the Bruce (whose heart may be buried here), sacked again, then shattered by Oliver Cromwell’s cannons in 1618. The result is an evocative ruin, with much of the abbey’s grand main church remaining. Visitors can examine carvings of dragons and a bagpipe-playing pig, gaze at the fertile Tweed valley and the surrounding hills through long-empty arched windows, and dream of the influence once wielded by the community that occupied this great complex.