Sueno's Stone

Sueno's Stone is the tallest and most complex piece of early medieval sculpture in Scotland, a Pictish cross-slab seven metres high carved from local sandstone between the mid-800s and early 900s and, unusually, still standing where it was first raised, at the east end of Forres. One face carries a great Christian cross above a scene read as a royal inauguration, two bearded figures stooping over a seated king, a subject found nowhere else in Pictish or early Scottish art. The other face is a battle told in strips: horsemen arriving, fighting on foot, cavalry put to flight and heaps of severed heads. It may celebrate a victory of Kenneth MacAlpin or Donald I as Gaelic-speaking kings took over the Pictish lands, or tell a foundation legend. A glass pavilion now protects it from the weather, so reviewers advise a dry day, when rain and reflections do not hide the carving, and allow about ten minutes.