Hotel Colessio

A Victorian mansion halfway up the castle hill

Spittal Street runs up the spine of Stirling's old town, between the station and the castle, and Colessio occupies a Victorian mansion on it: high ceilings, original plasterwork, a sweeping staircase and a bar at the bottom of it that locals use as well as guests.

The rooms are individually styled and come in six grades, from standard doubles through to the Forth and Bruce suites, with tea and coffee in every room and Nespresso machines in the higher grades. There is a designated accessible double, which is worth knowing in a building of this age on a hill of this gradient.

The restaurant does modern Scottish cooking and is open to non-residents, and breakfast is served to guests. Between that, the parking and the position, it works as a base for the castle and for Stirling generally rather than as somewhere you drive out of each morning.

Good to know

Features

Where it puts you

Stirling Castle is the reason most people come, and it is five minutes uphill: the Great Hall, the restored Renaissance palace and a view over the Forth valley that explains why every army in Scottish history wanted this rock. The Church of the Holy Rude and the Old Town Jail are on the same street.

The Wallace Monument is across the river, 246 steps up for the best view in the central belt, and the Bannockburn Experience is a couple of miles south. Stirling also happens to be the best connected town in Scotland: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth and the southern Highlands are all inside an hour.