The famous Church of St Michael of Linlithgow with its bright aluminium open crown spire, representing Christ's crown of thorns, can be seen from miles around. The exact origin of the church is unknown; its first recorded mention is in a charter of 1138 in which King David I gifted it "with all its chapels, lands and other rights" to the Cathedral of St Andrews. The centre window of the apse features a fleet of ships in memory of Charles Wyville Thomson, the locally born oceanic explorer who died in 1882.