1st – 18th May 2025
Enjoy | Visit | Explore
#blythswoodfestival
Tour of the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow
May 12 @ 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow, 232 St Vincent Street
Join us for a tour of our beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings and learn about our College history in its 425th year. The Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow was founded by Royal Charter in 1599 initiated by surgeon Peter Lowe, physician Robert Hamilton and apothecary William Spang. This empowered the College to regulate and maintain standards for medicine which, in Glasgow in the late 16th century, were severely lacking. Medicine was a lottery and very expensive – and rarely worked! The College has gone from strength to strength over the last 425 years and now incorporates five faculties of Physicians, Surgeons, Dentists, Podiatrists and Travel Medicine.
Originally based in the Trongate, then moving to St Enoch Square in 1791, and now from 1862 in St Vincent Street, near the top of Blythswood Hill, the range of linked townhouses was joined in 1893 by the magnificent College Hall designed by leading architect Sir John James Burnet. The College has a working library founded in 1698 – open to the public as well as College Fellows and Members – and important collections of early books from 1543 onwards and art work which can be inspected, including Audubon’s “The Birds of North America”, 1827-34.
The tour also incorporates the current exhibition ‘Sir William Macewen: At the Cutting Edge’ about the ‘father of neurosurgery’ who carried out the world’s first successful brain tumour removal at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1879.
The tour is free but donations are welcome to support our heritage and learning programmes
