Inverness holds 4,000 years of Highland history in a 15km radius: Clava's passage cairns, Craig Phadrig's Pictish stronghold, Culloden Moor where the Jacobite cause died in 1746, and Fort George built to make sure it never rose again.
Three Bronze Age burial cairns of roughly 2000 BC, ringed by standing stones. The two passage cairns are aligned on the midwinter sunset, their entrances catching the low December sun. Unstaffed, open all hours, small lane car park.
A vitrified Iron Age fort on a wooded ridge west of the city, its ramparts fused by fire around 400 BC and reoccupied by the Picts. Traditionally the stronghold of King Bridei, visited by St Columba around AD 565. Waymarked forest path.
The Highlands' main archaeology collection on Castle Wynd: Pictish carved stones, Bronze Age grave goods, Jacobite weapons and Highland silver. Open Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, closed Sunday and Monday outside high summer.
Inverness's oldest place of worship, on the mound where St Columba is said to have preached. The tower is 14th-century; the body of the church dates from 1770. Jacobite prisoners were executed against the graveyard wall after Culloden.
The moor where the Jacobite army was destroyed in under an hour on 16 April 1746, ending the last rising. The 360-degree immersion theatre plays out the battle minute by minute; clan grave markers stand on the restored moorland outside.
The boulder from which the Duke of Cumberland is said to have watched the battle, and the well where Clan Chattan's dead were piled. Both sit on the open moor beyond the ticketed visitor centre, reachable on the free perimeter path.
The vast artillery fortress begun in 1748 to garrison the Highlands after Culloden, and never attacked. A mile of bastioned rampart, the original barrack rooms and the Highlanders' Museum. Dolphins are regularly seen from the north wall.
Thomas Telford's flight of four locks, opened in 1822 after 19 years of work and the largest civil engineering project in Britain at the time. The canal links Inverness to Fort William through the Great Glen fault line.
The record office for the whole Highland region: estate papers, clearance-era emigration lists, kirk session minutes and parish registers back to the 1600s. Search rooms open Tue-Fri; bring photo ID to register as a reader.
Built in 1593, the oldest surviving house in Inverness, with its crow-stepped gables and original turnpike stair. Church Street around it is the medieval spine of the burgh, running from the Mercat Cross down to the old harbour.
A 15th-century tower house built around a living holly tree, still home to the Cawdor family. Shakespeare's Macbeth borrowed the title, though the real Macbeth died three centuries before the keep was raised. Open May to early October.
A steep wooded drumlin known as the hill of the fairies, where the Brahan Seer's prophecy said ships would one day sail past — and did, once Telford's canal opened alongside it in 1822. Terraced Victorian graves spiral to the summit.