Furthermore, after Queen Victoria 'discovered' Scotland in 1842, it became highly fashionable, fuelled by the image of wild clans and rugged, lonely landscapes - a far cry from the bitter reality of life within the rapidly industrializing Central Belt, populated increasingly by families left homeless by the Highland Clearances. The major cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee were expanding at great speed, filling up with warehouses, municipal buildings and workers' accommodation. This ushered in the Victorian Age of architecture. Marked by a continuation of the Romantic and Classical idioms established in the 18th century, grand buildings celebrated the pride and self-confidence of the industrial giants. A fusion of historical styles became common, and architects increasingly looked for novel ways to decorate their buildings. For instance, the Tudor-Gothic Donaldson?s Hospital in Edinburgh, designed by William Playfair in 1851, fuses a symmetrical plan with elaborate turrets and a central decorated tower. Playfair was also responsible for creating the rich facade at Floors Castle near Kelso in 1838, cloaking the building in a new fashionable guise without changing the basic structural design.

Inspired by simple proportion and logical harmony, the followers of the Greek Revival created buildings of massive serenity, using little decoration. In Glasgow, Alexander 'Greek' Thomson brought a unique interpretation to this style. He created buildings from warehouses to tenements and churches, such as Glasgow's impressive St Vincent Street Church, an imposing construction that mixes the massive solidity of Greek design with exotic motifs and decoration. In Edinburgh, it was William Playfair who created the city's icons of Greek Revivalism: the Royal Scottish Academy of 1836, and the National Gallery of Scotland of 1857, are both well proportioned with precise detail, the former making more use of scrolls and wreaths, the latter slightly less ponderous and more elegant. With the Gothic style no longer restricted to ecclesiastical architecture, the majestic Glasgow University building of 1870, designed by George Gilbert Scott, dominates the skyline of the West End in pseudo-medieval splendour. Similarly, in Edinburgh, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery of 1885?90, designed by Sir R. Rowand Anderson, is richly detailed with pointed arches and turrets.

New materials of the industrial age, such as cast iron, were being used to great effect in buildings such as Kibble Palace in the Glasgow's Botanic Gardens and the interior of the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, which was based on London's Crystal Palace. The industrial age also gave birth to such great figures of engineering as William Telford, Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler, who constructed roads and bridges throughout Scotland. Baker and Fowler were responsible for the pinnacle of Scottish engineering that straddles the Firth of Forth in cantilevered steel glory, the Forth Railway Bridge, which spans more than a mile, took seven years to build and employed more than 5000 men at a time, rivalling the Eiffel Tower in its complexity.