Scotland Guide
Argyll
The Isle of Iona
Less than a mile off the southwest tip of Mull, IONA ( 
www.isle-of-iona.com ) – just three miles long and not much more than a mile wide – has been a place of pilgrimage for several centuries, and a place of Christian worship for more than 1400 years. It was to Iona that St Columba fled from Ireland in 563 and established a monastery, compiling a vast library of illuminated manuscripts and converting more or less all of pagan Scotland as well as much of northern England. Today the island can barely cope with the constant flood of day-trippers, so to appreciate the special atmosphere you should plan on staying at least one night.
The ferry from Fionnphort drops you off at the island's main village, BAILE MÓR (literally "large village"), which is in fact little more than a single terrace of cottages facing the sea. Just inland lie the extensive pink-granite ruins of the Augustinian nunnery, built around 1200 but disused since the Reformation – if nothing else, it gives you an idea of the state of the present-day abbey before it was restored. Across the road to the north is the Iona Heritage Centre (Easter– Oct Mon– Sat 10.30am–4.30pm; £2), with displays on the social history of the island.
No buildings remain from Columba's time: the present abbey (daily: April– Sept 9.30am–5.30pm; Oct– March 9.30am–4.30pm; £4.50; www.historic-scotland.gov.uk ) dates from the arrival of the Benedictines in around 1200, was extensively rebuilt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and restored virtually wholesale early last century. Adjoining the facade is a small steep-roofed chamber, believed to be St Columba's grave, now a small chapel. The three high crosses in front of the abbey are decorated with the Pictish serpent and boss and Celtic spirals for which Iona's early Christian masons were renowned.
Iona's oldest building, the plain-looking St Oran's Chapel, lies south of the abbey, at the centre of Iona's sacred burial ground, Reilig Odhráin (Oran's Cemetery), which is said to contain the graves of sixty kings of Norway, Ireland, France and Scotland, including Duncan and Macbeth.