[Oct. 2023] The walking tour we participated in in Glasgow, Scotland ended in front of the Museum of Modern Art.
The main point is that the statue of Lord Wellington here is wearing a cone.
It’s a red conical sign to indicate that road construction is underway.
By chance, his cone was purple.
It is unclear who placed the cone over the statue in the first place, and why, but no matter how many times the city authorities removed it, it was always covered with a cone again.
Our guide, Liz said that this is now one of the symbols of the town.
Banksy, an artist famous for his wall paintings, apparently liked this so much that he held an exhibition at this Museum of Modern Art.
After we broke up, we didn’t have time to go to see the museum, but we just went into a souvenir shop within and found that they were selling memo pads with cone motifs.
I bought this as a souvenir for a friend who used to live in Glasgow a long time ago.
The cone was attached not only to this statue of Wellington, but also to the statue in George Square where the tour began.
This is an equestrian statue of Queen Victoria.
According to Liz, statues of women are extremely rare, and “they say they are rarer than statues of dogs.”
There is also a statue of Robert Peel next to the Queen Victoria statue.
This man was a British politician in the first half of the 19th century, and according to Liz, he was a controversial figure who opposed the abolition of slavery.
After doing a little research, I learned that slavery had already been abolished in Britain in 1833, and that Peel had taken the position of not interfering with slavery in the United States.
He seems to be disliked by modern Glaswegians anyway, and there are traces of white paint on it.
The statue in the middle of George Square is of Scottish poet Walter Scott, and according to Liz, it was “built 10 years earlier than the Scott statue in Edinburgh.”
After all, it seemed like there was a sense of rivalry between Scotland’s two largest cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
By the way, Scotland’s capital is Edinburgh, but its largest city is Glasgow.
The population is said to be over 600,000 (Edinburgh has about 500,000).
Since 2013, Glasgow has adopted the motto “People Make Glasgow,” with the aim of encouraging the local community to liven up the city.
We saw the slogan emblazoned on the wall of the building.
