Melrose

Red sandstone arches frame empty sky where the abbey's roof once stood, and beneath the chapter house ground lies a lead casket holding Robert the Bruce's embalmed heart. Melrose sits in the Scottish Borders where the Eildon Hills split into three peaks above the River Tweed, and the town carries its history with the quiet confidence of somewhere that has seen everything.

Melrose Abbey was founded by Cistercian monks in 1136 and wrecked repeatedly by English armies before its final ruin; the tracery of its surviving windows is considered the finest Gothic stonework in Scotland. In 1921 an excavation beneath the chapter house turned up a lead casket containing a heart — almost certainly that of Robert the Bruce, whose deathbed wish was for his heart to be carried on crusade — and it lies reburied there under a carved marker. The three Eildon summits above the town served the Romans as a signal station, with the Trimontium museum documenting the substantial military base that stood at their feet, and rugby's sevens format itself was invented in this town in 1883.The Tweed slides past below it all, patient as ever.