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The crag
It guarded the lowest crossing of the River Forth until the 1890s
Stirling Castle is one of the largest and most historically and architecturally important castles in Scotland. It sits atop an intrusive crag, surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. Its strategic location guarded what was, until the 1890s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth.
1543
The infant Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned in the chapel royal in 1543
Mary, Queen of Scots, was brought to Stirling Castle for safety in July 1543 as an infant, and crowned in the chapel royal on 9 September 1543.
Sieges
There were at least eight sieges, the last in 1746
There have been at least eight sieges of Stirling Castle, including several during the Wars of Scottish Independence. The last was in 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie unsuccessfully tried to take the castle. The first record of the castle dates from around 1110, when King Alexander I dedicated a chapel there.
A palace
It was a palace as much as a fortress
Before the union with England, Stirling Castle was one of the most used of the many Scottish royal residences, very much a palace as well as a fortress. Several Scottish kings and queens were crowned at Stirling. Most of the principal buildings date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Day 5, morning
Next is National Wallace Monument.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Stirling Castle, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.