Glasgow mural trail map: a walk through the city centre murals

The route planner above starts with eleven murals ticked, in the order you meet them walking from Glasgow Central to High Street. Untick any you want to skip, and the planner redraws the line and gives you a fresh distance and a rough walking time. Treat it as a half-day walk. The council has always called the trail temporary, since many murals were painted to brighten stalled building sites, so we checked every stop against recent sources and left out the ones that have gone.

The route

The council-backed City Centre Mural Trail spreads around thirty works across the centre. This planner keeps to the compact core. You start in the lanes west of Buchanan Street, where three murals share Mitchell Street, follow Argyle Street to a painted passage, cross and drop to Dixon Street, then follow the river east to the Clutha. From there you turn north into the Merchant City, through the narrow wynds off the Trongate, past the new blocks around Candleriggs and up High Street, which climbs gently towards the cathedral.

The stops

Bubbles

Rogue One and Art Pistol painted this in 2019 across both walls of Renfield Lane, a service lane you can see into from Union Street. A French bulldog sits between two girls, one of them blowing bubbles, and the bubbles are painted with their own shadows so they seem to float off the brick. Look for the doctored traffic sign beside the dog. The lane is narrow and used by delivery vans, so take your photographs from the mouth of it and keep an ear out.

Wind Power

Walk down to Mitchell Street, a narrow canyon of tall buildings parallel to Buchanan Street. At its northern end, Rogue One and Art Pistol painted a girl blowing on a dandelion clock as a live event during Doors Open Days in 2014, a nod to the wind energy that gives the piece its name. On Mitchell Lane, a few steps away, stands Charles Rennie Mackintosh's former Glasgow Herald building, now known as the Lighthouse. Remember his name: he turns up again by the river.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

A little further south, Smug's girl leans down four storeys with a magnifying glass, as though inspecting the pavement. The Glasgow-based painter, born in Australia, works freehand in aerosol and is known for photorealism, and the joke here depends on where you stand. Walk to the spot where the lens lines up with the people below and she appears to be picking them off the street. The title nods to the 1989 film, and the painter's name is tucked into the reflection on the glass, so look closely.

The World's Most Economical Taxi

At the Argyle Street end of Mitchell Street, a black cab drifts upward on a bunch of balloons while a man reaches for it from below. It is by Rogue One, one of the painters behind a large share of the trail, and it reads as a local joke about taxis, the weather or both. Stand back on the opposite pavement to take in the whole wall, and watch for delivery vans, which use the street.

Are Ye Dancin'?

Walk east along Argyle Street, past the foot of Buchanan Street, and look on your left for the passage that leads to Sloans, one of the city's oldest bars. Conzo and Globel painted both walls. On one side the Duke of Wellington wears a traffic cone, a reference to the real statue outside the Gallery of Modern Art a few minutes north, which has been coned for decades. On the other, a blue-haired busker holds a bottle of Irn-Bru. The title nods to the ceilidh dances held at Sloans. The passage is tight, so step aside for people heading to the bar.

Dr Connolly, I Presume?

In 2017 BBC Scotland commissioned three giant portraits of Billy Connolly for his 75th birthday. This one, enlarged from a Jack Vettriano painting, shows him windblown on a stormy shore, on the gable of the Hootenanny bar on Dixon Street. Of the other two, John Byrne's on Osborne Street has been hidden behind new student flats, and Rachel Maclean's was pasted up on the Gallowgate, east of this route. Step back along Dixon Street to take in the full height of the wall.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the Clutha

Walk down to Clyde Street and along the river to the Clutha, on the corner of Stockwell Street. In 2018, for the 150th anniversary of Mackintosh's birth, Rogue One and Art Pistol painted the architect in black and white, looking through a coloured window patterned with his Glasgow rose. The bar's walls also carry a black and white gallery of famous faces. The Clutha is a place of memory too: in November 2013 a police helicopter fell onto its roof and ten people died. For the clearest view of the Mackintosh mural, cross to the river walkway.

Spaceman

Head up Stockwell Street to the Trongate and turn into New Wynd, one of the narrow old lanes that run off it. Recoat and Ali Wyllie painted an astronaut's helmet against hard-edged geometric blocks of colour, a style that owes more to comic books and graphic design than to photorealism. The seventeenth-century Tolbooth Steeple at Glasgow Cross is a short walk east if you want a look at the older city.

Keeper of Light

Continue north into the Merchant City and look up from Hutcheson Street. Smug's woman wears ornate jewellery and holds a candlestick and a martini glass, painted photorealistically up eleven storeys of a building facing the new Candleriggs Square. It was made with Yardworks and the Merchant City community council. This is the one wall on the walk you cannot take in from close up: walk to the far end of the street, or into the square, and let the whole building come into view.

Fellow Glasgow Residents

A short walk east, on the gable of a multi-storey car park at Ingram Street and Candleriggs, Smug painted foxes, a badger, deer, squirrels and birds peering out of the brickwork in 2013. Its title is the point: these animals live in the city too. It has outlasted years of building work around Candleriggs, and the plans for the neighbouring site promised to keep most of it in view. Count the animals before you move on: some are easy to miss.

St Mungo and St Enoch

Walk east along Ingram Street or George Street to High Street. Smug's St Mungo of 2016, on a gable near the corner of George Street, shows the city's patron saint as a modern man with a robin, after the bird that never flew in the old rhyme about his miracles. Close by, on the back of a High Street tenement, is a new St Enoch, his mother, painted by Smug and unveiled in spring 2026 after an earlier version was removed for building repairs. The paint on St Mungo has begun to weather, which is a reason to come soon.

Practical notes

• Weather: Glasgow rain is part of the walk. Wet walls and grey skies make the colours richer in photographs, but the lanes get slippery.
• Respect: these murals are on bars, homes, car parks and offices. Do not block doorways for a photograph, keep out of yards, and keep to the sides of lanes, which carry deliveries.
• Change: the trail is temporary by design, so murals go when buildings are repaired or redeveloped, and new ones appear. The council publishes its own map and an audio guide.
• Painting: none of these walls is open for painting. If you are curious how a commission like these works, read our guide to how a large mural gets made, and for the words people argue over, our note on street art and graffiti.

Further reading

Rick Steves' Best of Scotland is a practical companion for the rest of Glasgow and the trip beyond it. Rafael Schacter's World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti puts walls like these in international company, and Gabriel Campanario's The Art of Urban Sketching, by the founder of the Urban Sketchers network, is a good push to draw a mural rather than just photograph it. These picks come from publisher details and published reviews rather than our own testing. If you have a Berlin trip coming up, our Berlin street art walk works the same way.

Questions

How many murals are on the Glasgow mural trail?

The official map lists around thirty, but the number changes as murals are lost to building work and new ones are painted. This planner keeps to eleven in the compact centre.

Is the Glasgow mural trail free?

Yes. Every mural on the trail is outdoors on a public street or lane, so there is no ticket and you can follow it at your own pace.

Where does the Glasgow mural trail start?

There is no fixed start. This route begins at Glasgow Central, at the Union Street side, and ends on High Street near High Street station.

Which Glasgow murals have been lost?

Murals regularly disappear when buildings are repaired or redeveloped. John Byrne's Billy Connolly portrait on Osborne Street is now hidden behind student flats, and Smug's first St Enoch was removed before he painted the new one on High Street.