//
Photo: via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5
The temperance activist Kate Cranston established a chain of artistic tea rooms, where citizens (especially women) could enjoy non-alcoholic refreshments in genteel surroundings. Her designer was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and this Sauchiehall St branch, opened in 1903, was the most popular and has been lovingly restored. It's still a cafe-bistro, and that's the best way to enjoy it. But so many people have come just to look at the decor that it's morphed into a museum, so taking a tour or having a meal is now the only way to see the Room de Luxe on the second floor.
The Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903. They quickly gained enormous popularity, and are the most famous of the many Glasgow tearooms that opened in the late 19th and early 20th century. The building was fully restored, largely to Mackintosh's original designs, between 2014 and 2018. It re-opened as working tearooms in July 2018 and traded under the name "Mackintosh at The Willow" until February 2026 when it was renamed again to "The Mackintosh Tearooms".
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Independent cinema opened in 1939 showing classics, and art and foreign-language movies - the advent of "talkies" made these less accessible to British audiences. It hosts the annual Glasgow Film Festival.
GSA is an independent art school offering university level programmes and research in architecture, fine art and design. It also has evening classes and a summer school. However the main draw for general visitors was its Mackintosh building, one of CRM's finest. This was severely damaged by fire in 2014, and restoration was coming along nicely when a worse fire struck in 2018. The only saving grace was that much of the art collection (with many Mackintosh pieces of furniture) was rescued from the first fire and hadn't returned, so along with the decanted teaching arrangements wasn't affected by the second fire. Another rebuilding is in progress, which has a £100M budget and is expected to complete in 2030. So for the next few years you can't visit the building, but see the GSA website for an online tour of the collection, and details of physical exhibitions in other buildings such as the graduating students' show in early June.
Primarily a teaching college but they also put on public performances of classical and contemporary music, ballet and dance, musical theatre, and contemporary drama.
What you see now outside is the modern frontage added in 2014, but the interior is the French Renaissance design adopted after the first major fire in 1879; it was rebuilt thus after the second fire in 1896. The venue opened in 1867 and opera was always a major offering, since in those days you could show it at a profit. From 1957 to 1974 Scottish Television was based here, then it became the home of Scottish Opera and later of Scottish Ballet. It stages mainly "serious" theatre, opera and ballet.
This was founded in 1904 and has seen many of the greatest stars of music hall perform, such as a then-unknown Charlie Chaplin. Neither the building nor its offerings have changed much over the years. They're proud of being an unsubsidised independent venue, which means a diet of crowd-pleasing light theatre, musicals, comedy and panto. You're not destined to see Parsifal here unless some celebs do it in drag.
The home of the bagpipes is in the former Cowcaddens Free Church. The museum shows 300 years of piping history, mainly showing Scottish bagpipes, but also showing Northumbrian pipes and some from Poland, Hungary, Italy and Spain. The piping centre also has a restaurant, an 8-room hotel and teaches piping.