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Museums and history
in Orkney.

It’s 20:54 in Orkney.
Orkney

Old ways and wartime islands.

History in Orkney is told by the people who lived it. A farmhouse at Birsay was lived in until the 1960s, and its peat fire still burns on a central hearth, beside a stone bed built into the wall. At Lyness, Scapa Flow's story runs from the scuttled German fleet of 1919 to the sinking of the Royal Oak. The radio sets that listened over the Flow are kept in Kirkwall. On South Walls, islanders look after an old lifeboat and the memory of the crew lost in 1969. Plan the day around the Hoy ferry, and give each place an unhurried hour.

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Place of the day19 hours ago

Scapa Flow Museum.

How a natural harbour on Hoy became the centre of the naval war, twice.

Read about it
From our guide18 hours ago

Italian Chapel.

On the little island of Lamb Holm stands one of Orkney's most loved buildings, made from two Nissen huts by prisoners of war. Italian soldiers captured in North Africa were held here to build the Churchill Barriers, and they asked for a place to worship. The artist Domenico Chiocchetti led the work, giving the huts a painted interior and a concrete front of arches and pinnacles. His Madonna and Child above the altar was based on a prayer card from his mother. He came back in 1960 to help restore it.

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Free17 hours agoOrkneyStanding Stones of StennessAttractionOrkneyUnstan CairnAttractionOrkneyMaeshowe Chambered CairnAttraction

Free to visit.

Beaches, waterfalls, viewpoints and stones: nothing to pay and nobody to ask.

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Newly discovered15 hours agoOrkneyGlimps Holm BeachAttractionOrkneyPolly KettleRestaurantOrkneyThe Harray PotterAttractionOrkneyThe Viking Village BirsayAttractionOrkneyMaeshowe Chambered CairnAttractionOrkneyUnstan CairnAttraction

Some good places to go, newly added to the site.

The newest places on our pages on Orkney.

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From our guide14 hours ago

Ring of Brodgar.

The Ring of Brodgar stands on a narrow neck of land between the Loch of Harray and the Loch of Stenness, with water and hills on every side. It was raised around 2500 BC as a circle of 60 stones, and 36 of them survive, some more than four metres tall, inside a deep ditch cut from the rock. What went on here is still a mystery. A local legend says the stones were giants, caught dancing when the sun came up and turned to stone. You can walk round it at any hour, free of charge.

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Lunch13 hours agoOrkneyBirsay Bay Tearoom1.0 milesOrkneyHelgi’s16.9 milesOrkneyThe Foveran17.0 miles

Lunch near Brough of Birsay.

The three good places closest to it: Birsay Bay Tearoom, Helgi’s and The Foveran.

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From our guide11 hours ago

Longhope Lifeboat Museum.

At Brims on South Walls, the lifeboat Thomas McCunn sits in the boathouse she was launched from for almost thirty years. The small museum around her tells the story of the Longhope lifeboats and their crews. That includes the night of 17 March 1969, when the lifeboat TGB went out into a south-easterly gale and was lost with all eight of her crew, seven of them from this one small community. Islanders run the museum themselves. It is a quiet, deeply affecting place, and worth the drive south through Hoy.

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From our guide10 hours ago

Skara Brae.

Looking into a home that was lived in five thousand years ago is a strange and moving thing. Skara Brae sits on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of the Mainland, and it lay hidden under sand until a great storm in 1850 tore the dunes away. Each house still has its stone dresser, box beds and central hearth, and covered passages link one to the next. People lived here for around six centuries, and nobody quite knows why they left. Start in the visitor centre, where most of the finds are kept.

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From our guide7 hours ago

Ness of Brodgar.

Between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar runs a strip of farmland with a secret under it. For twenty years from 2004, archaeologists uncovered great stone buildings from around 3000 BC, with walls metres thick, painted stonework and decorated slabs. The dig finished in 2024 and the trenches have been filled in to protect what is under them, so there is nothing to see in the ground today. It is still worth pausing on the road between the lochs and picturing what lies a few feet under the grass.

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From our guide5 hours ago

Kirbuster Farm Museum.

Kirbuster is a farmhouse of the old Orkney sort, with a peat fire burning on a central hearth and no chimney, only a hole in the roof for the smoke. Orkney Museums calls it the last unrestored firehoose in northern Europe. The house goes back to the late 1500s, the last family lived here until the 1960s, and the stone neuk bed in the wall echoes the ones at Skara Brae. Later rooms add a parlour, old farm tools and a Victorian garden. Entry is free, and it pairs well with a day at Birsay.

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From our guide4 hours ago

Churchill Barriers.

The road south from the Mainland runs across four concrete causeways, hopping from Lamb Holm to Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay. They were built after a German U-boat slipped into Scapa Flow in October 1939 and sank HMS Royal Oak, with the loss of more than 800 men. Much of the labour came from Italian prisoners of war, and the work took four years. Today it is a lovely drive, with sandy beaches along the way and the rusting hulls of old blockships still showing above the water.

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From our guide2 hours ago

Unstan Cairn.

Unstan is a green mound on the shore of the Loch of Stenness, on the road to Stromness, and it is a tomb you can get right inside. The way in is a low, narrow passage, more crawl than walk, into a stone chamber divided into five stalls by upright slabs, with a small side cell off the middle. When it was dug in the 1800s it held human bones, arrowheads and fine pottery bowls, and that style of pottery is still called Unstan Ware. It costs nothing to visit, at any time of year.

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