[2] It is largely a Victorian town, which developed into a tourist resort after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the area in 1842 and bought a highland estate at Balmoral, and the arrival of the railway in 1863.

It remains a popular tourist resort today and is particularly known for its Pitlochry Festival Theatre, salmon ladder and as a centre for hillwalking, surrounded by mountains such as Ben Vrackie and Schiehallion.

The town has retained many stone Victorian buildings, and the high street has an unusual period cast iron canopy over one side.

In 1842 Queen Victoria visited Perthshire on one of her grand tours and her favourable opinion of the area caused the town to be more widely noticed.

[5] From the 1960s, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, an inventor of radar, and his wife, Dame Katherine Jane Trefusis Forbes, Director of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in World War II, lived at her summer house, "The Observatory", in Pitlochry.

Pitlochry Festival Theatre[6] was founded by John Stewart in 1951, originally situated in a tent in the grounds of Knockendarroch House in Lower Oakfield.

Blair Athol sits on the main road at the southeast of town and since 1933 has been owned by Bell's, now part of the Diageo group.

There is a Roman Catholic church, St Bride's, at Rie-achan near Loch Faskally which was established in 1949 as a temporary facility for workers building the dam and power-station there.

However, when the workers moved on the chapel remained and following a fire a new church was built and opened in 1969 and serves the local Catholics and large number of Summer visitors.

Tarbolton was responsible for the power station but died soon after, and the scheme was then completed by architect T. H. Eley, being built by Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners.

As a very early acknowledgement of ecological needs the scheme included the ingenious Pitlochry fish ladder to allow spawning salmon to bypass the dam.

[15] Today it occupies a modern, spacious glass fronted building with open aspects across the river Tummell and Ben Vrackie.

The theatre operates a unique repertoire system which means visitors to the area can see a different play every day during their Summer Season Festival.

The sound and light show, The Enchanted Forest,[17] takes place in Pitlochry's nearby Faskally Wood every year in October, attracting 70,000 visitors to the town.

Every Monday during the summer, the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band,[18] hosts a traditional evening of music, dancing and song, beginning and ending with a short parade along the high street.

The nearest official Met Office weather station for which online records are available is Faskally, about 2 miles (3 km) north-west of the town centre.

Relocating along with the pavilion in the 1950s when the dam was built to the current location the Vale were regular competitors in the Scottish Cup in the past having played ties against the likes of Dundee and Hibernian.