Òran Mór occupies a building that spent its first century saving souls and every year since reviving Glasgow's West End. Raised in 1862 as the Kelvinside Free Church, it served as a parish kirk until the dwindling congregation merged elsewhere in 1978, leaving the pyramid-spired Gothic building at Byres Road and Great Western Road empty and decaying.

Publican Colin Beattie rescued it in 2002, turning pews into a pub. Its auditorium still wears eleven stone heads carved for a penny apiece by William Mossman, though visitors now look upward, toward Alasdair Gray's celestial ceiling mural, reputedly Scotland's largest public artwork.

VoiceMap's self-guided walk through Glasgow's West End follows this stretch of Byres Road, past the Ubiquitous Chip's converted stables and the Grosvenor Cinema's rediscovered upper floor, tracing how the district keeps finding fresh purpose for old buildings, Òran Mór's journey from pulpit to pint the most theatrical example yet.