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The Floral City, the Silver City by the Golden Sands, City of Bon-Accord Aberdeen is enduringly The Granite City. Whatever, it wears its titles with pride, a prosperous cosmopolitan city with an international well-travelled population, and a business culture firmly based on education and IT. Yet this is a historical old place, combining a 21st century outlook with an enchanting city skyline.

The sternly granite edifices of His Majesty's Theatre and the Town House vie with the iced-wedding-cake appeal of Marischal College (the largest white granite building in the world), while historic Old Aberdeen and the fishing village of Fittie mark an indelible air of time gone by. Or time in the present. Here is a thriving cultural calendar married to excellent restaurants and concerts that make Aberdeen an energising city break. Yet native Aberdonians are a modest lot. "Nae bad" they might mutter, if things are going outstandingly well. Here's one place where you don't grow with a swollen head.

Nor will they tell you of the compliments and honours showered on their city. "To walk up the cobbled High Street and College Bounds (in Old Aberdeen) is to go back in time" reported In Britain Magazine.
Rose Mound, Duthie Park

Nor will many tell you that this is the city that won the Britain in Bloom competition so many times that the judges banned it from re-entering! Undismayed, Aberdeen quietly took its floral pulling power on to the European stage, as astonished continental rivals found to their cost. Who would have guessed that amid the hard granite, Aberdeen soil would prove so fruitful for flowers? That some quirk in the earth nurtures generations of rose nurserymen and women? Little wonder that BBC's award-winning gardening programme Beechgrove Garden is headquartered here. Here in these northern latitudes, it's a long season from the first snowdrop to the last leaf. Yet even in the depths of winter, the aptly-named Winter Gardens provide colour and scent. At two acres (one hectare), it provides what some say is the largest area under glass in Europe.