Historic Scotland & National Trust for Scotland places in Scottish Borders

The best-preserved urban friary in Scotland, a pilgrimage church built after a holy cross was found here in 1241, in a walled green in Peebles; free, open daily 10:00 - 16:00, barriers round the tower.

Two well preserved stretches of the Roman road built under Agricola in AD 79 to 81, more than 7 m wide, on open upland south of Soutra Hill; free and open at all times, parking by Soutra Aisle.

Remarkably complete ruin of a 1150 abbey by the Tweed, with pink sandstone Gothic transepts, a painted chapter house, an ancient yew and the graves of Sir Walter Scott and Earl Haig; adult £8.50, half price in the first EH year.

A rare lowland broch of the first centuries AD inside an older hillfort above the Whiteadder Water near Abbey St Bathans, Berwickshire; free, open at all times, about a mile and a half on foot from the A6112.

A richly carved Norman arch of the 1100s, reused as the entrance to a burial vault, in the churchyard at Edrom near Duns; free and open at all times.

A two-storey tithe barn with crow-stepped gables and a stone forestair beside the parish church at Foulden, near the English border; free, seen from outside at any time.

Grim 14th-century Douglas fortress guarding remote Liddesdale, the strength of the bloodiest valley in Britain, where Mary Queen of Scots visited Bothwell in 1566; open April to September, adult £8.50, half price in the first EH year.

David I's great Augustinian abbey of 1138, its roofless church almost complete from Romanesque east end to Gothic nave and rose window, with early carved stones and a herb garden; adult £8.50, £7.50 online, half price in the first EH year.

Fragment of one of Scotland's richest medieval abbeys, founded by David I in 1128, its Romanesque west end and tower the model for Glasgow and Jedburgh; free, April to October, free council car park next door.

David I's Cistercian abbey of 1136, rebuilt after 1385 in rose-coloured stone with superb Gothic carving, the bagpiping pig, Robert the Bruce's heart, a museum and bell tower views; adult £7.50, half price in the first EH year.

Roofed 15th-century Pringle tower house on a Borders crag, where young Walter Scott heard the tales behind his Minstrelsy, with views to Bamburgh from the top; open April to September, adult £8.50, half price in the first EH year.

Free walled garden in Melrose with lawns, scented borders and one of Scotland's oldest bulb lawns, looking to the abbey and the Eildons.

Walled garden in the precinct of Melrose Abbey, once Scotland's only dried-flower garden, with a heritage orchard of 70 apple varieties.

Britain's oldest working letterpress printer, unchanged since 1866, where a 90-minute tour lets you set type and watch the presses run.

Sheer Berwickshire cliffs alive with tens of thousands of nesting seabirds, a four-mile loop to the lighthouse and the Mire Loch, and a Nature Centre.