Lerwick

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For Shetlanders, there's only one place to stop, meet and do business and that's "da toon", LERWICK; it's home to about 7500 people, roughly a third of the islands' population. All year, its sheltered harbour at the heart of the town is busy with ferries, fishing boats, oil-rig supply vessels and a variety of more specialized craft including seismic survey and naval vessels from all round the North Sea. In summer, the quaysides come alive with local pleasure craft, visiting yachts, cruise liners, historic vessels such as the restored Swan, and the occasional tall sailing ship. Behind the old harbour is the compact town centre, made up of one long main street, Commercial Street; from here, narrow lanes, known as "closses", rise westwards to the late-Victorian new town.

Lerwick's attractive, flagstone-clad Commercial Street is still very much the core of the town. Its narrow, winding form, set back one block from the Esplanade, provides shelter from the elements even on the worst days, and is where locals meet, shop, exchange news and gossip. The Street's northern end is marked by the towering walls of Fort Charlotte (daily: June-Sept 9am-10pm; Oct-May 9am-4pm; free), begun for Charles II in 1665 during the wars with the Dutch, and in the 1780s repaired and named in honour of George III's queen.

Although the closses that connect the Street to Hillhead are now a desirable place to live, it's not so long ago that they were regarded as slum-like dens of iniquity, from which the better-off escaped to the Victorian new town laid out to the west on a grid plan. Hillhead, up in the Victorian "new town", is dominated by the splendid Town Hall (Mon-Thurs 9am-5pm, Fri 9am-4pm; free), a Scottish Baronial monument to civic pride, built by public subscription. You're free to admire the wonderful stained-glass windows in the main hall, which celebrate Shetland's history, and to climb the castellated central tower which occupies the town's highest point.

Opposite the town hall, housed on the first floor of the desperately ugly municipal library, the Shetland Museum (Mon, Wed & Fri 10am-7pm, Tues, Thurs & Sat 10am-5pm; www.shetland-museum.org.uk; free) is full to the brim with nauticalia. More unusual exhibits include Shetland's oldest telephone, fitted with a ceramic mouthpiece, and a carved head of Goliath by Adam Christie (1869-1950), a Shetlander who spent much of his life in Montrose Asylum, and who is perhaps best known for his application to patent a submarine built of glass, which would thus be invisible to enemies.

A mile or so southwest of the town centre lies the fortified Clickimin Broch, begun around 700 BC and later enclosed by a defensive wall, whose main tower once rose to around 40ft, though the remains are now around 10ft high. Excavation of the site has unearthed an array of domestic goods that suggest international trade, including a Roman glass bowl thought to have been made in Alexandria around 100 AD.

In earlier times the seasonal nature of the Shetland fishing industry led to the establishment of small stores, known as böds, often incorporating sleeping accommodation, beside the beaches where fish were landed and dried. Just beyond Lerwick's main ferry terminal, a mile and a half north of the centre, stands the Böd of Gremista (June to mid-Sept Wed-Sun 10am-1pm & 2-5pm; www.shetland-museum.org.uk; free), the birthplace of Arthur Anderson (1792-1868), naval seaman, businessman, philanthropist, Shetland's first native MP and founder of the Shetland Journal.

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