Dunrobin Castle

A French château appears on the Highland coast — 189 rooms of turrets and terraced gardens descending to the sea, hiding a 1300s tower at its core. Dunrobin looks as if it were airlifted from the Loire Valley and set down on the Sutherland shore as an architectural joke.

Dunrobin is the largest house in the northern Highlands, its French-inspired exterior the work of Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, wrapped around a medieval original. The formal gardens descend in Versailles-modelled terraces to the Moray Firth, hedgerows framing the sea, hedgerows framing the sea. The museum in the grounds is its own peculiar marvel — Pictish stones, taxidermy, ethnographic artefacts and a Victorian steam fire engine sharing one room, a Victorian collecting mind preserved intact. The castle's history as seat of the Sutherland earls and dukes also touches the darkest chapter of the Highlands — the Clearances were driven from this estate — and the guides do not pretend otherwise.