Glasgow gives its best bits away: every council-run museum is free, the Necropolis and Glasgow Green cost nothing, and a Subway day ticket stays under £5. Three days here run on market finds, £6 street-food plates and hill-top views without a ticket price.
Victorian garden cemetery on a hill behind the Cathedral: 50,000 burials and around 3,500 monuments across 37 acres. Open daily from 7am, free, and the John Knox column gives a full sweep over the East End rooftops.
Scotland's only mainland medieval cathedral to survive the Reformation with its roof intact, built between 1136 and 1484 over St Mungo's tomb. Entry is free, and the vaulted lower church with its forest of pillars costs nothing.
Shipping magnate William Burrell's 9,000-object hoard of Ming ceramics, Degas pastels and medieval tapestries, reopened in 2022 after a £68m refit. Free entry, set inside a free country park with Highland cattle grazing outside.
The city's oldest park, granted to the people in 1450, holding the world's largest terracotta fountain (1888, 46ft high) and the Templeton carpet factory's Venetian-palace facade. Open around the clock, no gate, no charge.
East End weekend market trading since the 1920s: several hundred stalls of vinyl, tools, vintage jackets and pure Glasgow patter, Saturday and Sunday roughly 10am to 5pm. Browsing is free and haggling is expected.
Vegan café-bar and record shop in a Merchant City warehouse yard, running since 2002. Mains sit around £10–£13, soup and bread lands near £6, and Monorail Music shares the room so crate-digging is free entertainment.
Weekend street-food market in a Govan warehouse with dozens of rotating traders, live bands and a dog-friendly floor. Entry free, most plates £6–£9, and the bar pours Glasgow-brewed beer beside the stalls.
Family-run Punjabi vegetarian canteen in the Southside where a thali runs near £11 and dal with roti stays under £7. Communal tables, no frills, portions built for people who have walked all day.
Southside park laid out by Joseph Paxton in 1862. A ten-minute climb to the flagpole opens a free panorama across the whole city to the Campsie Fells, with Ben Lomond visible on a clear morning. Glasshouse and pond below.
Twenty-seven free acres at the top of Byres Road, open 7am to dusk. The 1873 Kibble Palace glasshouse shelters tree ferns and white marble statues at no cost, and the Kelvin Walkway below passes a ruined Victorian station.
Zaha Hadid's zigzag-roofed transport museum holds 3,000 objects and a recreated 1930s street of shops, all free. The 1896 barque Glenlee is moored outside and boarding it costs nothing either. Open daily from 10am.
The 175-tonne cantilever crane of 1931 once swung locomotives onto ships bound for India; now it stands floodlit over the water. The riverside path past it to the Squinty Bridge is open at any hour and free.