Scotland’s third most populous city, Aberdeen is known variously as the Silver City or the Granite City (due to the profusion of granite, with its sparkling mica, in its Victorian architecture) and the Flower of Scotland (due to the picturesque countryside in which it is nestled). The city is renowned for its many splendid gardens, parks and floral displays, having been named Best City in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Britain in Bloom awards ten times.
Although Aberdeen was supported by industries such as textiles, fishing, papermaking and shipbuilding in prior decades, the city owes much of its modern day prosperity to the discovery of oil in the nearby North Sea in the mid 20th century.
Most of those looking for cheap flights to Aberdeen will be working in the oil industry. The city is now sometimes known as the “Oil Capital of Europe” due to the oil companies’ vast investment in off-shore drilling in the region, which has also boosted the local economy and aided the city’s development toward becoming the modern and cosmopolitan urban centre that it is today.
