Dunfermline Abbey

Royal abbey and mausoleum containing the burial traditions of St Margaret, Robert the Bruce and other Scottish monarchs. The site is in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. The community developed from a priory into an abbey under David I.

St Margaret and major Scottish monarchs, including Robert I, were buried at Dunfermline. Dunfermline’s religious community developed into a Benedictine abbey under the patronage of Scottish royalty. St Margaret of Scotland was buried there and became the focus of a major saintly cult, while numerous kings and queens were also interred at the site.

Robert the Bruce’s burial gives the abbey additional national importance. Pilgrimage to St Margaret’s relics formed part of its medieval sacred life, although the surviving complex also encompasses royal and architectural history well beyond the shrine tradition. Devotion to St Margaret made Dunfermline a focus of pilgrimage; the saint’s burial and relic tradition is a key part of the abbey’s sacred history. Architecturally, the site is associated with Romanesque and later medieval.