If you are lucky enough to be in Glasgow during the Commonwealth Games, why not take the opportunity to explore more of what the city has to offer? Veronica Stivala puts together a three-day itinerary for an engaging visit.

This year will see the largest multi-sport event ever held in Scotland: the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The city is set to host 4,500 athletes and sell a million tickets to spectators from around the world for sporting events in 14 venues and a wonderful athletes’ village that encompasses 35 hectares of land.

If you are lucky enough to be in Glasgow at this time of year, why not take advantage of that and explore the city in more depth.

Here’s a three-day plan of what you could do.

Day One

Exploring the West End

Discover the historic University of Glasgow, the beautiful Botanic Gardens and Kelvingrove Park and the buzzing Byres Road and Ashton Lane, where you can find a wealth of great vintage and design stores.

A fantastic range of cafés, bars and specialist delicatessens can also be found in this bohemian quarter.

The Mackintosh House

University Avenue, Glasgow, G12 8QQ

The interiors of Six Florentine Terrace, Glasgow – home of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh from 1906 to 1914 – have been meticulously reassembled within the University’s Hunterian Art Gallery.

www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk

Glengoyne Distillery

Dumgoyne, near Killearn, Glasgow, G63 9LB

Reputedly Scotland’s most beautiful distillery, Glengoyne is within easy reach from Glasgow and is open all year round. It offers seven different visits, one of the most varied collections in the industry.

www.glengoyne.com

Evening: Concert at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut

272a, St Vincent Street, Glasgow, G2 5RL

With more than 300 gigs a year, King Tut’s is the place for Scottish music fans to find their new favourite band.

As one of Scotland’s leading concert venues, King Tut’s is renowned across the globe as an exciting show-case for new and emerging bands and as the venue that supported some of the music industry’s biggest names at the start of their careers: from Oasis to Radiohead, The Killers, The Verve, Pulp, My Chemical Romance, Biffy Clyro, Manic Street Preachers and Texas.

www.kingtuts.co.uk

Day Two

Mackintosh tour

Following the recent fire, The Glasgow School of Art’s world famous Mackintosh building will be closed for around 12 months to allow for restoration.

The GSA has developed a new Mackintosh at the GSA tour. Led by the GSA’s award-winning student guides, the new hour-long tours give an insight into the Mackintosh story at The Glasgow School of Art: from student to master architect and designer.

They take in the Mackintosh building and a number of hidden architectural gems that have a special connection with the architect.

Tours can be booked online via www.gsa. ac.uk/tours, by telephone on 0044 (0)141 353 4526 or in person at The Window on Mackintosh, Reid Building, 164 Renfrew Street, Glasgow G3 6RF.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Argyle Street, Glasgow

Since reopening in July 2006 after a three-year, £35 million refurbishment, Kelvingrove has welcomed more than four million visitors through its doors and has recently been ranked in the top 15 most visited museums in the world.

It has 22 themed, state-of-the-art galleries displaying 8,000 objects. Collections include natural history, arms, armour and art from many periods of history.

www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/index.cfm?venueid=4

The Burrell Collection

Pollok Country Park, 2060 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow G43 1AT

The internationally acclaimed Burrell Collection is one of the most important and wide-ranging collections of the past century.

Accumulated by wealthy Glasgow ship owner, Sir William Burrell, and gifted to the city in 1944, the collection is one of the greatest ever created by one person.

museums@glasgowlife.org.uk

House for an Art Lover

Bellahouston Park, 10 Dumbreck Road, Glasgow, G41 5BW

Designed by – you guessed it – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, House for an Art Lover is one of the city’s most popular cultural attractions.

The exterior has been realised – in materials, craftsmanship and dimensions – as closely as possible to the Mackintosh designs of 1901.

Inside, Mackintosh designed the entire layout and he and his wife provided detailed interior designs for some rooms. These rooms have been realised in breathtaking detail.

www.houseforanartlover.co.uk

Evening: Spend an evening in Merchant Square, a Victorian building with a covered courtyard that is home to buzzing bars and award-winning restaurants.

Day Three

The Lighthouse

11 Mitchell Lane, Glasgow, G1 3NU

The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture, is a visitor centre, exhibition space and events venue in the heart of Glasgow.

It acts as a beacon for the creative industries in Scotland and promotes design and architecture through a vibrant programme of exhibitions and events.

The Lighthouse is housed in the former Glasgow Herald building, the first public commission completed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

www.thelighthouse.co.uk

Gallery of Modern Art

Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, G1 3AH

Housed in an elegant, 18th-century neo-classical building in the heart of the city, the Gallery of Modern Art offers a thought-provoking programme of temporary exhibitions featuring cutting-edge contemporary work by local, national and international artists.

www.glasgowlife.org.uk

Explore shopping district – City Centre and Merchant City

Glasgow is consistently voted as the top place to shop in the UK, outside London’s West End. Little wonder then that in this ‘dear green place’, you’ll find a plethora of cool vintage shops, independent artisan food and drink stores, well-known brand names and exclusive designers.

Glasgow Cathedral

Cathedral Square, Castle Street, Glasgow G4 0QZ

The first stone built Glasgow Cathedral was dedicated in the presence of King David I in 1136.

The present building was consecrated in 1197 and has one of the finest post-war collections of stained glass windows to be found in Britain.

www.glasgowcathedral.org.uk

The Necropolis

The Necropolis has been described as a “unique representation of Victorian Glasgow”, built when Glasgow was the second city of the empire.

It reflects the feeling of confidence, wealth and security of that time.

Evening: Enjoy dinner and drinks in Finnieston, a trendy emerging neighbourhood situated between the city centre and the West End, which boasts a number of great bars and restaurants.

• The Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games run from July 23 to August 3. For more information about the event and Glasgow visit www.peoplemakeglasgow.com.

Fast facts

Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city with a population of around 600,000 and 2.5 million in the city region.

It attracts 2.3 million visitors per year, generating £494 million for the local economy – 23 per cent are from overseas with the largest proportions from the US, Germany, Spain, Australia, Canada, France and the Netherlands.

In 2014, top travel guides have consistently named Glasgow as the must-visit destination of the year, highlighting the city’s warmth, style and energy.

Glasgow is home to more than 100 cultural organisations including Scotland’s national orchestra, theatre, opera and ballet companies and is also blazing an internationally acclaimed trail in contemporary art, design and music.

The city has the greatest concentration of creative industries in Scotland, with more than 5,000 people directly employed in the cultural sector.

No fewer than six winners of the Turner Prize for art, nine Turner Prize nominees and three Beck’s Futures winners have hailed from, trained in, or worked out of the city in recent years. Reinforcing its position as a centre for cutting-edge art, Glasgow’s Tramway will host the 2015 Turner Prize.

Glasgow is a Unesco City of Music, one of only five in the world, which is being reinforced this year by the city’s hosting of the MTV Europe Music Awards and BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

Glasgow has again been shortlisted in the SportBusiness Ultimate Sports City 2014 Awards.

The city’s super-league shopping status was confirmed in 2008 when it was named the best place to shop in the UK outside London’s West End for the fourth consecutive year by Experian: a position it expects Glasgow to hold until at least 2018.