Aberdeen travel guide

Top 10 sights in Aberdeen

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© PaulT (Gunther Tschuch) · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St Machar's Cathedral

   A Church of Scotland cathedral in Old Aberdeen whose oak ceiling of about 1520 carries forty-eight heraldic shields of the popes, emperors and Scottish nobles of the day — a political diagram in wood. Robert the Bruce's neck bone is said to be buried in the grounds.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Lucas Kendall · CC BY-SA 2.0

   St Mary's Cathedral

   The Catholic cathedral of Aberdeen at 20 Huntly Street, built in 1860 by Alexander Ellis in Gothic Revival with a granite spire of about sixty metres. It became a cathedral when the diocese was restored in 1878.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© Ikiwaner · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Drum Castle

   A castle near Drumoak whose square granite tower is one of the three oldest in Scotland, built in the thirteenth century, with a Jacobean wing added in 1619. It was the seat of the chiefs of Clan Irvine for 653 years and is now National Trust for Scotland.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Chris Downer · CC BY-SA 2.0

   St Andrew's Cathedral

   The Scottish Episcopal cathedral of Aberdeen and Orkney, whose ceiling carries the arms of the American states — Samuel Seabury, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, was consecrated in this city in 1784. It is a category A listed building.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Aberdeen Art Gallery

   The city's main art gallery, opened in 1885 in an Alexander Marshall Mackenzie building with a sculpture court added in 1905. It holds strong Scottish painting and twentieth-century British art, and reopened in 2019 after a four-year rebuild.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© Anthony Foster · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Aberdeen Castle

   A late medieval castle on Castle Hill, destroyed in the Wars of Independence in the early fourteenth century — the townspeople are said to have taken it by night, whence the city motto Bon Accord. Tower blocks now stand on the site.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Richard Slessor · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Aberdeen Maritime Museum

   A maritime museum on the Shiprow by the harbour, in three linked buildings including Provost Ross's House of 1593. Its centrepiece is an eight-metre model of a North Sea oil platform, and it covers shipbuilding, whaling and the clipper trade.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Ikiwaner · CC BY-SA 3.0

   St Nicholas, Aberdeen

   The original parish church of Aberdeen, known as the Mither Kirk, with fabric from the twelfth century onward and a fifteenth-century vaulted crypt. Excavation under it in the 2000s found about two thousand medieval burials.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9

   Muchalls Castle

   A castle of 1619 overlooking the North Sea in Kincardine, whose plasterwork ceilings with heraldic and mythological figures are among the best preserved in Scotland. It is a private house.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Andrew Wood · CC BY-SA 2.0

    Hallforest Castle

    A fourteenth-century tower keep near Kintore, one of the oldest in Scotland, granted by Robert the Bruce to his nephew Sir Robert Keith after taking it from the Comyns. Only the roofless shell stands in a field.

    TiqetsKlook

Popular tickets & tours in Aberdeen

Live products and prices are provided directly by Klook.

KlookOpen Aberdeen activitiesBrowse tickets & toursKKdayOpen Aberdeen activitiesBrowse tickets & tours

Trending now

Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© Colin Smith · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Blairs College

   A junior seminary south of Aberdeen that trained boys for the Catholic priesthood from 1829 to 1986, in a granite building above the Dee. It now houses the museum of Scotland's Catholic heritage, with a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots painted the year of her execution.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Bill Harrison · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Codona's Amusement Park

   An amusement park on Aberdeen beach run by the Codona family, Italian showpeople who have worked Scottish fairgrounds since the nineteenth century. It is the largest permanent amusement park in the north of Scotland.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© The original uploader was PMJ at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Duthie Park

   A park by the River Dee, given to the city in 1883 by Elizabeth Duthie in memory of her family, with a Winter Gardens glasshouse of 1899 — one of the largest indoor gardens in Britain, holding cacti, koi and a Victorian fernery.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Ragazzi99 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Tolbooth Museum

   A seventeenth-century jail in the town house on Castle Street, built in 1616 and reckoned one of the best preserved old prisons in Scotland. The cells, with prisoners' graffiti, are the museum, along with material on policing and public execution.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Lucas Kendall · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Union Terrace Gardens

   A sunken public garden on Union Terrace, laid out in 1879 in the valley of the Denburn, with elm trees and a floral coat of arms on the bank. Proposals to build over it were fought off for years; it was renovated and reopened in 2024.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© LindaAnn08 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Gordon Highlanders Museum

   A museum in the former house of the painter Sir George Reid, devoted to the Gordon Highlanders, raised in 1794 and merged into the Highlanders in 1994. Nineteen Victoria Crosses won by the regiment are displayed.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Colin Walker · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Seaton Park

   One of Aberdeen's largest parks, bought by the city in 1947 from Major Malcolm Hay, a First World War cryptographer whose family had held Seaton House for centuries. The house burnt down in 1963; the grounds remain, with formal beds, walled gardens and paths along both banks of the Don.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Bill Harrison · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Aberdeen Mosque and Islamic Centre

   A Sunni mosque and Islamic centre in Aberdeen, opened in 2013, serving a Muslim population that grew substantially with the North Sea oil industry. It is the main mosque in the north of Scotland.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© AberdeenBill · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Mercat Cross, Castle Street, Aberdeen

   A market cross of 1686 by the Aberdeen architect John Montgomery in the Castlegate, with a hexagonal arcade carrying portrait medallions of ten Stuart monarchs. It is reckoned the finest surviving mercat cross in Scotland.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Watty62 · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Triple Kirks

    Three churches built as one block in 1843, when the Free Church split from the Church of Scotland and needed premises at once — designed by Archibald Simpson to look like a single building. Only the spire survives among later development.

    TiqetsKlook