Palace of Holyroodhouse

On the night of 9 March 1566, Mary Queen of Scots was having supper in a tiny room off her bedchamber when a group of armed nobles burst in, dragged her Italian secretary David Rizzio from behind her skirts, and stabbed him fifty-six times. The bloodstain on the floor has been pointed out to visitors ever since — though whether it's genuinely Rizzio's blood or a Victorian tourist enhancement is a question no one at the palace is keen to answer. The supper room is barely larger than a cupboard, making the violence that unfolded there feel claustrophobic and immediate even five centuries later.

The palace began life as a guesthouse for Holyrood Abbey, which David I founded in 1128 after — legend has it — a miraculous stag with a glowing cross between its antlers saved him from being gored during a hunt. James IV built the first proper royal residence here in 1501 for his bride Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister. His son James V added the massive tower between 1528 and 1532, the same tower where Mary would later witness Rizzio's murder and marry two of her three husbands.

Charles II never actually visited Edinburgh, but that didn't stop him from ordering a complete rebuild of the palace in the 1670s. Scottish architect Sir William Bruce transformed it into the baroque and classical palace you see today, creating the symmetrical facade with its twin towers. The Great Gallery inside contains 96 portraits of Scottish monarchs, real and mythical, commissioned from the Dutch painter Jacob de Wet II — who was given just two years to paint all of them, which explains why most of them look suspiciously alike.

The palace remains the King's official Scottish residence, and the grounds include the atmospheric ruins of Holyrood Abbey, its Gothic nave open to the sky since the roof collapsed in a storm in 1768.