Glasgow Cross railway station

The Merchant City Festival is a major cultural festival taking place in Glasgow's Merchant City area. Attracting more than 55,000 people, the four-day Festival presents the cream of Scotland’s theatre, music, visual arts, comedy, dance, film, fashion and food scene. The Festival presents opera singers in the courtyards and squares performing alongside cutting-edge live art, street theatre, iconoclastic comedy and music from every genre in the bars and on the street. It also has a quirky short film programme that places films in estate agents, hairdressers and tattoo parlours. Many of the events are free of charge. The Merchant City Festival has attracted an extensive range of supporters and contributors from festival directors to national organisations such as Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. A ‘festival of festivals’, it has worked with established festivals such as New Moves International, the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, Glasgow International Jazz Festival, Big in Falkirk and Glasgay! An international context is provided by the Directors’ Choice programme that provides a remarkable range of street artists selected from festival directors throughout Europe. The 2008 Merchant City Festival was held in September. The Merchant City Festival is produced by UZ Events in partnership with Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. Celtic Music Radio broadcast live from the 2008 festival on 1530kHz and on the internet, from an Outside Broadcast location in Merchant Square.

The Glasgow Tolbooth was a municipal structure at Glasgow Cross, Glasgow, Scotland. The main block, which was the meeting place of the Royal Burgh of Glasgow, was demolished in 1921 leaving only the steeple standing. The steeple is a Category A listed building.

The 'Glasgow LGBT Centre' was a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community centre located at 84 Bell Street, Glasgow G1 1LQ. It was fully wheelchair-accessible, with a chairlift. It closed in April 2009, following withdrawal of funding from Glasgow City Council. This in turn was caused by reported concerns (unfounded, the Centre Board and AGM claim, and yet to be substantiated) of mismanagement. On 17 March 1991, the first ceilidh was held to raise funds for and awareness of the planned Centre, and this has since become an annual event. Other funding was received from sources such as Strathclyde Regional Social Strategy, Strathclyde Lesbigay Forum, and the Glasgow Development Agency. The chairlift was funded by a grant from Glasgow District Council.The Centre (then called Glasgow Gay and Lesbian Centre) was opened at premises in Dixon Street (just off St Enoch Square) on November 4, 1995. The building was converted from a file store for the Procurator Fiscal. The opening was attended by politicians George Galloway, Maria Fyfe, Mike Watson, and Bill Miller: also by singer Horse and poet Edwin Morgan, who read a poem specially written to mark the opening. The centre then closed for several months to allow building to continue, and was formally opened on March 20, 1996 by Joyce Keller, Mayor of Manchester. The old Centre included a cafe/bar, four offices which were rented to LGBT-friendly businesses, and two meeting rooms called the Jackie Forster Memorial Room and the Ian Dunn Memorial Room. It was regularly used by many LGBT community groups for meetings and events. In 2008, the Centre took the controversial step of banning ScotsGay magazine from its premises on the grounds that its adult content is incompatible with the Centre's status as a family-friendly venue.In 2008, the Centre moved to new premises in Bell Street, Glasgow. In 2010, the Centre, named Castro, was locked out of its premises in Bell Street after it emerged that the centre had serious financial irregularities.

The Tron Theatre is located in the corner of Trongate and Chisholm Street. This location was formerly the Tron Kirk, which had started as the Collegiate Church of Our Lady and St. Anne in the Trongate area of Glasgow, Scotland. The Tron Steeple still stands adjacent to the theatre. The Tron Theatre building is home to the Tron Theatre Company, and is a producing house for contemporary theatrical work, also functioning as a receiving house for a visiting program of theatre, comedy, and music from Scotland, the UK, and abroad. Its Education and Outreach department offers a range of activities, from drama workshops for children and young people, to creative writing for adults and professional development opportunities for theatre students and practitioners.

The Collegiate Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Anne, Glasgow, was founded in the middle of the sixteenth century by James Houstoun, Subdean of Glasgow and Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1534 to 1541. The church was located on the south side of Trongate. Two copies of its Latin constitution, dating from 1549, have survived in the city archives. These provide detailed information about the structure of the college and its funding. James Houstoun's original provision was for a Provost, eight canons or prebends, and three choristers, but later benefactions extended this. The prebends were supported by property scattered across the city, and in Dalry, Maybole and Rutherglen. The third prebend was the organist, who was also in charge of the Song School for the instruction of the youth in plainsong and descant, which stood on the west side of the church. When their voices broke, choristers would continue their education at the Grammar School. The canons wore fur-trimmed red hoods, and surplices which were to be washed once a year. The daily pattern of services is carefully laid out. St Anne's Day, 26 July, was marked with much pomp and ringing of bells, after which money for bread and ale was distributed to the canons, to thirty paupers, eight scholars, and the residents of the Hospital of St Nicholas by the cathedral. The lepers of St Ninian's Hospital received their share at a safe distance in the churchyard. At the Reformation in Scotland in 1560, this all came to an end. In 1570, the church was described as ruinous, when it passed into the hands of a city burgess, James Fleming. It later returned to use as a parish church of the Church of Scotland. In the 17th century a gothic spire was built. The church burnt down in 1793, and a new church was built to a classical design but retaining the spire. The kirk was designed by architect James Adam who was the joint architect of the very new Royal Infirmary, and a few years later the architect of the city's Assembly Rooms in Ingram Street. One of its most celebrated ministers was the evangelical and enterprising Rev Dr Thomas Chalmers. Much later, the Tron congregation merged with St George's on Buchanan Street in 1940 to form St George's Tron Church; after a period of disuse, the building – the Tron Kirk or Laigh Kirk – was converted into the Tron Theatre in the early 1980s.

The Glasgow Police Museum is an independant museum in the Scottish city of Glasgow. The museum opened in 2002 at the Glasgow Central Police Headquarters, before it was relocated to the Merchant City area of the city in 2009. The museum is dedicated to the history of the City of Glasgow Police, the United Kingdom's first modern-style municipal police force. It also displays a collection of over 2000 international police insignia and uniforms.

Trongate is one of the oldest streets in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Trongate begins at Glasgow Cross, where the steeple of the old Glasgow Tolbooth is situated, being the original centre of medieval Glasgow, and goes westward changing its name to Argyle Street at Glassford Street.

The Merchant City, a new name introduced through urban renewal by the Scottish Development Agency and the city council in the 1980s is one part of the metropolitan central area of Glasgow. It commences at George Square and goes eastwards reaching Glasgow Cross, in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland. It contains offices, flats, retail shops, restaurants, and bars. Part of the campus of the University of Strathclyde occupies the area. The Merchant City is home to several repurposed buildings including the City Halls & Old Fruitmarket, Merchant Square, and the Scottish Youth Theatre. It hosts many annual festivals.

Candleriggs is a street in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is located in the Merchant City area of the city centre. Candleriggs was historically the area of the old city of Glasgow where candlemakers plied their trade, at a safe distance from the crowded tenements clustered around the High Street. As the city expanded in the eighteenth century it became a thriving thoroughfare itself, lined with tenements and businesses typical of Glasgow at that time. Looking down Candleriggs from its northern junction with Ingram Street, stands St David's, later known as Ramshorn Kirk. It had been without a congregation for a long while before being purchased by the University of Strathclyde in 1982. The church dates from 1826, built in Gothic Revival style by an English architect, Thomas Rickman, whose plans featured the large central tower which dominates the structure. It now serves as the home for the University of Strathclyde's Confucius Institute for Scotlands Schools and Scotland's National Centre for Languages.Candleriggs is perhaps best known as the site of the City Halls, a musical venue operated by Glasgow City Council, home to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a regular Glasgow performance base for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It is the older purpose-built concert hall in Glasgow.The old Candleriggs Fruit Market building at the corner of Candleriggs and Bell Street housed a market for many years. With the opening of a purpose-built facility in May 1969, on the site of the old Blochairn Steelworks, it closed and was redeveloped as a complex housing pubs and restaurants which was renamed "Merchant Square". Towards the southern end of Candleriggs was the Goldbergs department store, which closed in 1991. It was then taken over by Vera Weisfeld (of What Every Woman Wants fame) and reopened in 1994 as Weisfelds - a budget clothing store. Weisfeld's closed in 1999. Granny Black's was a well known pub on Candleriggs housed in an old tenement building which collapsed due to a burst water main in the basement one night in February 2002. The building was empty at the time of the incident and there were no reported injuries. The site subsequently fell into dereliction and the land was acquired by the luxury retailer Selfridges of London, although their plans to build a department store there were later dropped. In late 2013, Selfridges began demolition of the former Goldbergs buildings and works began in early 2014 to landscape the area. Following Selfridges selling land to a property developer, approval was granted in May 2020 for mixed-use development of the site by Drum Property. The first phase of the development will include a 500-room hotel and 300 apartments and is currently under construction.

St Andrew's Square is a public square in the city of Glasgow, Scotland and lies to the south east corner of Glasgow Cross, close to Glasgow Green. The square is noted for its immense 18th-century classical church, St Andrew's in the Square, from which the square takes its name. The church was completed in 1758, to the designs of architect Allan Dreghorn and master mason Mungo Naismith and is among the finest of its type anywhere in Britain. The interior has lavish 18th century rococo plasterwork. The building is Category A listed. It is one of six squares in the city centre. The church standing amidst fields on the banks of the Molendinar Burn, was later enclosed by a square, encouraged by the town council who sold the ground to builder developer William Hamilton of Glassford, Lanarkshire, building between 1786 and the early 1790s. He was also the architect of the Tontine in the Trongate. The square became a fashionable residence for some of Glasgow's wealthiest merchants. "Here and in Virginia Street were domiciled the best and wealthiest in the city." The Royal Bank of Scotland opened here in the 18c with David Dale in charge of the agency. Sulman's panoramic Bird's Eye View of Glasgow published in 1864 shows the Square conveniently close to the mercantile centre of Glasgow Cross and the University of Glasgow in High Street.However, the increasing industrialisation in the 19thc of the surrounding resulted in deterioration of houses as many residents moved westward Most of the buildings facing onto the square were demolished in the 1980s; as part of the GEAR Project, Glasgow East-end Recovery Project new buildings in Georgian style were constructed with help from the Scottish Development Agency, and making the square traffic-free.

St Andrew's in the Square is an 18th-century category-A-listed former church in Glasgow, Scotland, considered one of the finest classical churches in Scotland, and now Glasgow's Centre for Scottish Culture, promoting Scottish music, song and dance. The church is in St Andrew's Square, near Glasgow Cross and Glasgow Green, on the edge of the City's East End.

The Queens Theatre was a theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, situated in Watson Street near Glasgow Cross. It was built in the 1870s to cater for working class Glaswegians. The theatre opened as the Star Hall. It went on to be renamed the Shakespeare Music Hall, New Star Theatre of Varieties and the Peoples Palace Theatre before being named the Queens Theatre in 1897. The theatre was destroyed by fire in 1952.