D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum

Staging theatre, dance and music.

RC cathedral with a Victorian Gothic facade opened in 1836.

In the 19th century you just had to have jute. Curtains and carpets and blankets, hard-wearing clothing. Satchels and roof felt, ropes of all kinds, sails for ships, tents for soldiers and seasonal farm workers. The raw material is a coarse flax that grows in Bengal: it was processed here because Dundee had fast ships to import it, whale oil to make it soft and workable, flax-weaving technology, and then again the fast ships to export finished goods globally. The city's mill owners grew very rich; the mill workers didn't, nor did the Bengalis. Verdant Works, built in 1833, was one of many jute factories here. Many of them still stand, converted into offices and apartments, while Verdant was turned into a museum in 1996. Volunteers demonstrate the clanking machinery.

This cemetery was part of Greyfriars Monastery until Mary Queen of Scots gave it to the city in 1564. The well-preserved gravestones are mostly 19th-century, including that of James Chalmers (d 1853), inventor of the adhesive postage stamp. The last burial here in 1878 was of George Duncan, businessman and MP. Today the Howff is a secluded, peaceful place.

Mostly light fare: musicals, tribute acts, light opera and comedy.

Discovery, launched in 1901, is an Royal Research Ship (RRS) specifically built for Antarctic exploration. She's a 3-masted wooden sailing ship with only auxiliary steam power, built in Dundee because its shipwrights still had expertise in polar sail-powered vessels that was being lost elsewhere. Discovery was commanded by Robert Falcon Scott, and also aboard was Ernest Shackleton. They reached Antarctica in early 1902 (austral summer), intending to spend one winter, but the ship became icebound for the next two years. They were just about to abandon ship in Feb 1904 when the ice broke and they escaped homeward to public acclaim. Both men were to return: Shackleton in 1907-09 didn't quite reach the South Pole, but survived. Scott in 1910-12 did reach it, but behind Amundsen, and all his party perished on the trek back to the coast. The museum has an extensive display of the 1902-04 expedition, then you go aboard the dry-docked ship, which had a later career as a polar merchant vessel.