Kilmartin Museum

Kilmartin Museum showcases over 22,000 artifacts spanning 12,000 years, including Scotland’s earliest Beaker pottery and Bronze Age tools.

Planning your visit

Kilmartin Glen holds one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric monuments in Britain — some 350 sites within six miles, including a linear cemetery of burial cairns, standing stone alignments, stone circles, and rock outcrops carved with cup-and-ring marks whose meaning remains unknown. The museum exists to interpret that landscape.

It reopened in 2023 after a major redevelopment, displaying over 22,000 artefacts spanning 12,000 years: Scotland's earliest Beaker pottery, Bronze Age metalwork, jet and stone jewellery from the cairns, and material from the excavations that continue in the glen.

The other layer is Dunadd, a rocky hill fort nearby that was the royal centre of Dál Riata, the kingdom from which the Scots took their name — a footprint and a carved boar in the rock at its summit are associated with the inauguration of kings.

The museum's function is preparation: the monuments are freely accessible, and knowing what you are looking at transforms a walk through fields into something considerably richer.

Kilmartin is in Argyll, around an hour from Oban. Allow two hours. The main booking is an entry ticket. Current availability is listed below.