Glasgow

Glasgow's Mural Trail – the Clyde to the High Street

A day on foot, from Glasgow Central to High Street station.

The route

Since 2008 Glasgow has been handing its blank gable ends, back lanes and bridge pillars over to painters, and the city centre has become a gallery you can walk round for free.

This day follows the council's mural trail on foot from the Clyde to the High Street, where the city began. It starts at Central Station and heads down to the river, where artists have painted the pillars under the Kingston Bridge. Then it winds through Mitchell Street and the lanes to Smug's giant girl with a magnifying glass and Rogue-One's taxi floating away on balloons. After lunch it's down to the Clutha for Mackintosh, across the Merchant City to the tallest mural in the city centre, and up George Street to Smug's St Mungo and his mother, St Enoch. It's about 4 miles, on pavements and paved lanes all the way.

The day

Murals

A day on foot among Glasgow's painted walls, from the river at the Kingston Bridge to the foot of the hill where the city began. The morning winds through the lanes round Mitchell Street, home to the trail's best-known murals, and the afternoon crosses the Merchant City to Smug's St Mungo on the High Street. Set off from Central Station at about 10am.

Under the Kingston Bridge
It's an 18-minute walk from Central Station down to the Broomielaw and west along the Clyde to the Kingston Bridge. Smug painted The Swimmer for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, its huge swimmers greeting drivers waiting at the lights. Beside it, on the electricity substation, his Generation Green shows a child planting wind turbines. Then walk in under the bridge, where the concrete pillars are a painted gallery by artists from Glasgow and much further afield, brought together by SWG3's Yardworks and repainted in 2026.
8 min on foot
Crimea Street
Crimea Street is an 8-minute walk up Washington Street and along. On the way, look back at the Pentagon Centre for The Rescue by the Rebel Bear, a painter who keeps their name secret. It shows a figure lifted out of a grey crowd, a picture of how love can lift you up. On Crimea Street, a wall painted for 30 years of Glasgow's Doors Open Days shows off the city's buildings. Its title, Today We're In Love Aren't We?, is a line by the poet Liz Lochhead.
11 min on foot
Renfield Lane
It's an 11-minute walk east and up Hope Street to Renfield Lane, a lane between Hope Street and Renfield Street, a block north of Central Station. Rogue-One painted Bubbles across both of its facing walls: a girl blowing soap bubbles that seem to drift from one side of the lane to the other, each casting its own shadow. Look up at the white glazed brick of the Daily Record building of 1904, one of Mackintosh's, where Stereo now serves vegan food. The Old Hairdresser's arts venue is across the lane.
About 5 min on foot
Mitchell Street
Five minutes round by Gordon Street brings you down Mitchell Street, where the best-known walls stand close together. Rogue-One and Art Pistol painted Wind Power live for Doors Open Day in 2014. At the corner of Mitchell Lane, opposite the Lighthouse, Keiti Forbes's Mo Chridhe, Gaelic for my heart, tells Glasgow's story in panels, St Mungo's four miracles among them. Near Argyle Street, Rogue-One's black cab floats off on balloons. Then turn round and look up for Smug's giant girl peering at the street through a magnifying glass.
4 min on foot
Springfield Court and Morrison Court
It's a 4-minute walk along Argyle Street and up Buchanan Street to Springfield Court, a lane through to Queen Street. Here Conzo and Globel painted Good as Gold, a golden Freddo, the chocolate frog that once cost 10p. GoMA's café and the Duke of Wellington in his traffic cone are 3 minutes on. Back down Buchanan Street, the same pair's Are Ye Dancin? fills Morrison Court, the covered lane beside Sloans, which dates its bar to 1797 and is a good place for lunch.
7 min on foot
Dixon Street
Dixon Street is a 7-minute walk through Morrison Court, across Argyle Street and down through St Enoch Square. Here Rogue-One copied Jack Vettriano's painting of Billy Connolly from the comedian's World Tour of Scotland in 1994, the Big Yin windblown on a storm-lashed shore near John o' Groats. It went up in 2017, for his 75th birthday, on the Hootenanny's gable at the corner of Fox Street: walk on past the pub and look back up over its beer garden.
7 min on foot
The Mackintosh mural at the Clutha
It's a 7-minute walk down to the river and east along Clyde Street to the Clutha, on the corner of Stockwell Street. Above the bar, Rogue-One and Art Pistol painted Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 2018, the 150th anniversary of his birth. The Clutha is loved for its live music and is a good place to stop for a pint. It is a memorial too: in November 2013 a police helicopter came down on its roof, and ten people died.
About 7 min on foot
St Andrew's Street
St Andrew's Street is 7 minutes on foot, along the Bridgegate and across the Saltmarket. James Klinge's Study of a Woman in Black 2 is one of his portraits of anonymous women dressed in black, who hold your eye with a turn of the head and a steady gaze. Just round the corner is St Andrew's in the Square, a classical church finished in the 1750s, and Glasgow Green, the city's oldest park, is a few minutes south.
6 min on foot
Merchant City
An attraction
It's a 6-minute walk north into the Merchant City, where five murals stand a few streets apart. Rogue-One's Butterflies in Her Eyes covers a building-site hoarding on Brunswick Lane, just off Candleriggs. From Wilson Street, look up at Smug's Keeper of Light, unveiled in 2025 and the tallest mural in the city centre. On the same street, Fearless Collective painted two Indigenous leaders from the Amazon for COP26, and Art Pistol's Rainbow Street runs along the road itself. Over the Ingram Street car park, Smug's animals from the parks peer through holes in the wall.
More about Merchant City
6 min on foot
George Street and the Wonderwall
George Street and the University of Strathclyde's walls are a 6-minute walk up. Artists from SWG3's Yardworks painted the car park front at Montrose Street for the 2023 Cycling World Championships, all retro jerseys, 90s kids' bikes and Graeme Obree's famous bike, Old Faithful. A few steps on, the Wonderwall by Art Pistol with Rogue-One and Ejek runs almost 200 metres across three seven-storey gables. Look for the Land-Ship, a ship's bridge that once stood on a college roof for teaching navigation.
5 min on foot
Murals of St Mungo & St Enoch
An attraction
It's a 5-minute walk east along George Street. Just before the High Street, look for the back of a tenement where Smug painted Cult of St Enoch in May 2026: Mungo's mother in her later years, in greens and purples, framed by foxgloves. Round the corner on the High Street is his St Mungo of 2016, a bearded Glaswegian of today with a robin on his hand, shared round the world within a week. High Street station is 4 minutes down the hill, the cathedral 7 minutes up it.
More about Murals of St Mungo & St Enoch

If it rains

Every wall is outdoors, but the pillars under the Kingston Bridge stand in the dry, and the rest can be taken in short dashes between doorways. Give the middle of the day to the Gallery of Modern Art on Royal Exchange Square, free, with its café, 3 minutes from Springfield Court, and make lunch a long one at Sloans in Morrison Court. In a downpour, keep to the walls that matter most, Mitchell Street, the Clutha, Keeper of Light and St Mungo, and finish under a roof in St Mungo Museum, free, on Cathedral Square, a few minutes up the High Street from the last mural. In the Merchant City, Sharmanka's kinetic theatre on the Trongate is an hour indoors when a show is on.

Worth a detour

Afro Scot, Tradeston
A 12-minute walk from the Swimmer along Anderston Quay crosses the Clyde by the Tradeston Bridge, the Squiggly Bridge to Glaswegians, to West Street. Here Afro Scot celebrates Glasgow's African community with a group of women cooking together. Crimea Street is a 9-minute walk back over the bridge.
Glasgow Cathedral
The mural shows the saint; his cathedral is a 7-minute walk up the High Street, over his tomb in the lower church. It's free, and from April to September it's open until 5pm, with last entry at 4.15pm; from October to March it shuts at 4pm, and on Sundays it opens only from 1pm. It is the first stop on our East End day.