The four turreted gateways furnish excellent examples of 6th and 17th century architecture.
Outside the turreted rampart are a ditch and covered way.
Its wards, in which nearly ten thousand patients receive treatment annually, are lodged in a series of turreted pavilions, and cover a large space of ground on the margin of the Meadows, from which, to make room for it, George Watson's College - the most important of the Merchant Company schools - was removed to a site farther west, while the Sick Children's hospital was moved to the southern side of the Meadows.
A strong machicolated and turreted wall surrounds the rock, running along its base on the south, ascending halfway up the cliff on the north, on which side it stands close to the abbey wall, and again descending on the west.
The points of interest on its shores are Lochearnhead (at the southern extremity of Glen Ogle), which has a station on the CallanderOban railway, and the ruins of St Blane's chapel; Edinample Castle, an old turreted mansion belonging to the marquess of Breadalbane, situated in well-wooded grounds near the pretty falls of the Ample; Ardvorlich House, the original of Darlinvarach in Scott's Legend of Montrose, and the village of St Fillans at the foot of the loch, the terminus of the branch line of the Caledonian railway from Perth.
