Augusta Company

INVERNESS

The name of this town in Gaelic is Inbhir Nis and its population is more than 41.000 inhabitants. Inverness is the capital of the Highlands and the administrative centre of Highland Council and was designated a city in 2000. Inverness is twinned with Augsburg (www.augsburg.de) in Germany and La Baule in France (www.labaule.tm.fr).

The river Ness flows through the city.

Historically Inverness was important in the Cromwellian and Hanoverian governments' attempts to control the Highlands. The castle, which dominated the town was destroyed in the 1745 Jacobite Rising and eventually replaced by William's Burn's castellated Sheriff Court (1833-5).

You may see also the statue of Flora MacDonald, which memorial is in the Isle of Skye. Flora MacDonald (1722-90) is considered as the most Scottish romantic heroine (www.heritage.scotsman.com) who, after the Jacobite Uprising, led Charles Edward Steward (Bonnie Prince Charlie), disguised as her maid, to safety in Skye. As a result she was imprisoned in the Tower of London, but released in 1747. Married in1750 to Alan Macdonald of Kingsburgh, Skye, she emigrated to North Carolina in 1774 but returned to Scotland in 1779 after her husband was captured fighting the Loyalist side in the American War of Independence.

The town has an quite impressive architectural character in late Georgian and Victorian styles, notably Thomas MacKenzie's Bank of Scotland (1847) and Alexander Ross's twin towered Episcopal Cathedral of St-Andrew (1866).

Inverness is now a fast growing business and tourist centre. (www.aboutinverness.co.uk)

Near Inverness on the road to the Airport, you may stop to admire The Clava Cairns or Bulnaraun of Clava, one of the best preserved Bronze Age burial sites in Scotland. The site consist of 3 small burial chambers, aligned on a North-East-South-West axis. Each cairn consists of a multitude of large water-worn pebbles and boulders, piled in a bun shape, with an outer kerb of larger stones around which stand a stone circle.

La Baule and Augsburg are the 2 German and French cities Inverness is twinned with.