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Scotland Guide

Northeast Scotland

Dundee

• Accommodation
• Eating
• Pubs
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At first sight, DUNDEE ( www.dundeecity.gov.uk ) can seem a grim place. In the nineteenth century it was Britain's main processor of jute, the world's most important vegetable fibre after cotton, which earned the city the tag "Juteopolis". The decline of manufacturing wasn't kind to Dundee, but regeneration is very much the buzzword today, with some commentators drawing comparisons with Glasgow's reinvention of itself as a city of culture in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dundee's heyday was in the 1800s, its train and harbour links making it a major centre for shipbuilding, whaling and the manufacture of jute. This, along with jam and journalism – the three Js which famously defined the city – has all but disappeared, with only local publishing giant D.C. Thomson, publisher of the ever-popular Beano and Dandy, as well as a spread of other comics and newspapers, still playing a meaningful role in the city.