It’s hard to think of a piece of masonry more charged with history, myth and emotion, per cubic inch, than the Stone of Destiny. This battered suitcase-sized object, on which Scottish and English kings have been inaugurated and crowned for centuries, has been abducted and re-abducted, bombed, broken and repaired. In 1996 it was taken to Edinburgh Castle from Westminster Abbey on the raised back of a Land Rover, surrounded by a glass screen and a guard of honour like a victorious president. Last year it was temporarily taken back to London, so that King Charles III could be crowned with it beneath him.
Now the stone sits in the former auditorium of Perth City Hall, a venue that formerly thrilled to the sounds of the Who, Morrissey and, just after she was first elected prime minister in 1979, Margaret Thatcher. It has been a long time coming home – it was last seen in this city (or, to be precise, at the nearby Scone Abbey) more than 700 years ago, before King Edward I of England seized it. Now it is the literal and metaphorical centrepiece of the newly opened £27m Perth Museum, which has been redeveloped and installed in the old hall with the help of the Dutch architectural practice Mecanoo and the exhibition designers Metaphor.
