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Ceilidh (“cay-ly”) is a Gaelic word for a visit among friends, but it has taken on the meaning of “a party”. Sometimes it is just that, a hall with a band where everyone dances. At others it is a performance where people do a turn, singing, dancing or playing an instrument. They are great fun and even the smallest village hall may have world-class local or touring performers.

The world’s largest festival of Celtic music, with performers from as far afield as Mongolia and the Cape Verde Islands, as well as the Scots, Irish and Bretons.

“Palace” would be a more appropriate term, for this is the finest seat of any council in Britain, and Glasgow’s most prestigious building. Modelled on Classical Italian architecture, the building was designed by William Young and completed in 1888. The exterior is dramatic enough, but the interior is an exercise in the excesses of lavish décor. Aberdeen granite, Carrara marble, mahogany, gold leaf, frescoes, mosaics, pillars and balustrades are combined to astonishing effect. The Banqueting Hall is surely modelled on a dandy’s vision of heaven.

The physicist James C Maxwell produced the world’s first photograph with three colours in 1861.

This prolific inventor devised an electric telegraph, recognized the potential for electric welding, proposed the first transatlantic submarine cable and demonstrated wireless telegraphy through water. However, he is best remembered as the man who gave us the light bulb, the first creation of continuous electric light.

For sheer elegance, few castles can match Craigievar. Its cluster of towers held atop the slender tower house (1626) is a masterpiece of baronial architecture and poise. The interior retains the appearance of the original Forbes family home.

You don’t have to be a rhododendron specialist to be bowled over by this beautifully manicured orchestration of colour. An outstanding and rare collection, which is at its best in spring (see Crarae Gardens) .

Once a thriving village with mines, iron workings and trade links with the Low Countries, Culross fell into decline in the 18th and 19th centuries and became a forgotten backwater. Its restoration began in the 1930s, and now the town is a striking resurrection of its 16th- and 17th-century heyday. Even the plants in the palace garden are in keeping with the 1600s!

This cliff-edge castle was remodelled into a magnificent home for the Earls of Cassillis in 1777 by Georgian architectural master Robert Adam (see Culzean Castle) .

Robert Adam’s masterful design and exquisite taste reached their apotheosis in this castle, which ranks as one of Britain’s finest mansions. Set in a park that does it ample justice, it commands a dramatic coastal position, looking seaward from the top of an Ayrshire cliff (see Culzean Castle) .