The area around Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia, with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing. The Romans later built outposts in the area and, to keep Roman Britannia separate from the Gaelic and Pictish Caledonia, constructed the Antonine Wall, remains of which can still be seen in Glasgow today. Glasgow itself was founded by the Christian missionary Saint Mungo in the 6th century. He established a church on the Molendinar Burn, where the present Glasgow Cathedral stands, and in the following years Glasgow became a religious centre. Its name is derived from the Gaelic Glas chu which translates literally as "green hollow"; over the centuries this has become romanticised to mean "dear green place" which is often cited as a nickname for the city.

By the 16th century, the city's trades and craftsmen had begun to wield significant influence and the city had become an important trading centre with the Clyde providing access to the city and the rest of Scotland for merchant shipping. The access to the Atlantic Ocean allowed the importation of American tobacco and cotton, and Caribbean sugar, which were then traded throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.

The de-silting of the Clyde in the 1770s allowed bigger ships to move further up the river, thus laying the foundations for industry and shipbuilding in Glasgow during the 19th century. The abundance of coal and iron in Lanarkshire led to Glasgow becoming an industrial city, and it eventually came to be known as "the Second City of the Empire". Cotton factories and textile mills became large employers in Glasgow and the local region. Trading allowed Glasgow to become one of the richest cities in the world, and the merchants constructed spectacular buildings and monuments and reinvested their money in industrial development, a municipal public transport system, parks, museums and libraries. As the city's wealth increased, its centre expanded westwards as the lush Victorian architecture of what is now known as the Merchant City area began to spring up. As this new development took place, the focus of Glasgow's central area moved away from its medieval origins at High Street, Trongate, Saltmarket and Rottenrow, and these areas fell into partial dereliction, something which is in places still evident to the present day.

However, the city's industrial dominance would eventually come to an end. Glasgow did not escape the effects of the Great Depression, and though the outbreak of the second world war temporarily arrested the ongoing decline, the period after the war saw the greatest decline in its industrial base. Although ships and trains were still being built on Clydeside (as of today, only three major shipyards remain on the River Clyde, two of which are owned by BAE Systems Naval Ships), cheap labour abroad reduced the competitiveness of Glasgow's industries. By the 1960s, Glasgow had gone into economic decline and Glasgow's function as a port diminished with the introduction of containerized freight.

Facing a future without the dominant heavy industries which had brought it much wealth in the past, the city began to depopulate the overcrowded centre, dispersing the population to outer areas and new towns and building new motorways in order to allow a new service based economy to flourish. The infamous tenement slums (many of which had been destroyed or badly damaged by wartime bombs) were replaced by a new generation of high rise housing and large suburban housing estates (known locally as "schemes"). Whilst the hundreds of new tower blocks changed the city's skyline forever, the high rise edifices broke up long established community relationships and social structures. Coupled to poor design and low quality construction, some of the blocks created as many problems as they solved and became magnets for crime and deprivation.

Since the 1980s, Glasgow has been rebuilding both its image and its architecture, with extensive efforts to clean and refurbish surviving tenement flats, redeveloping the western end of the central area into a financial district and hosting renowned festivals. Glasgow was named European City of Culture in 1990, followed by City of Architecture and Design in 1999 and European Capital of Sport in 2003. Glasgow now boasts the largest contemporary arts scene in the UK outside of London, which is centred around the annual 'Glasgow International' arts festival. Glasgow has also been selected as host city for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.