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Alyth is a town in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, five miles (eight kilometres) northeast of Blairgowrie and about 17 miles (27 kilometres) northwest of Dundee. In 2022 the town had an estimated population of 3,046.

First mentioned by name in a 12th-century royal charter of William the Lion, Alyth for many centuries was an important market town and entrepôt on long-established drove roads by which Highland farmers brought their sheep and cattle to lowland markets. Another royal charter in 1488, from James III of Scotland granted Alyth the status of Burgh of Barony entitled to stage markets and fairs. The 17th-century stone Packhorse Bridge still stands in the middle of the town (now pedestrian-only), later joined by two other stone bridges for wheeled traffic, emphasising the settlement's importance as a river-crossing.

Agricultural improvements and expanding markets for livestock in the south contributed to Alyth's prosperity during the 18th and early 19th centuries, while water-power provided by the Alyth Burn plus, later, steam-power helped the development of a local textile industry specialising in linen. Steam power also brought the Alyth Railway to the town in 1861, accompanied by growth during the later 19th century in retailing along with hotels for holidaymakers, golfers and country sports enthusiasts.

Today, industry has largely gone, but Alyth retains many shops and businesses serving the local area. The town also has a flourishing community of artists and a growing tourism economy.

The boundaries of Alyth Community Council also encompass the hamlet of New Alyth (population c350), about one mile (1.5 kilometres) southwest of the town, together with a handful of smaller hamlets and steadings giving a total population of just over 3,000.

In late medieval times Scottish kings used the nearby Forest of Alyth for hunting during their progress around the country. They probably occupied the royal castle of Inverquiech just east of the town (where Edward I of England stayed during his campaign against the Scots in 1296) or the castle of Corb, a royal hunting-lodge in Glenshee in the north-west of the Forest.

Three miles (five kilometres) north of Alyth is Bamff House which has been held by the Ramsay family since 1232, when King Alexander II granted the estate to his physician Nessus de Ramsay. Bamff today is an ecotourism destination and, since 2002, home to a reintroduced population of wild beavers. Bamff is currently undergoing a major 'rewilding' project.

Alyth's Pack Bridge, (intended to carry packhorses loaded with sidebags or panniers across the burn) is one of the oldest masonry bridges[2] in Scotland and is shown on maps as far back as 1600.

During the years of civil and religious conflict in the mid-17th century, the town was the scene of a dramatic incident known as the ‘Onfall of Alyth’ (28 August 1651). The town had been chosen as the rendezvous for the Committee of Estates, effectively the Scottish government at that time, to organise resistance to the English Parliamentarian invasion forces under General Monck, then besieging Dundee. The committee was betrayed and surprised by a force of Parliamentarian cavalry, and in the fighting that ensued the Earl of Leven (commander of the Scottish forces), the Earl of Crawford, the Earl Marischal, Lord Nairne and other prominent persons, including the Minister of Alyth, Rev. John Rattray, were captured and sent to the Tower of London. This event temporarily extinguished the Scottish Government of the time.

Next to the Pack Bridge, on Pitnacree Street, is the site of one of the town's two textile mills. In the 18th century, Alyth became heavily involved in flax processing for the linen textile industry, and spinning and especially hand-loom weaving dominated local employment.

The Alyth Arches, visible from the centre of the town looking north, stand on the site of what is probably Alyth's oldest Christian church dating back to the 6th century and dedicated to St Moluag, a contemporary of St. Columba. They formed part of the old parish church, which was abandoned in 1839 when the present fine new church was erected 200 yards to the west. There are also a number of graves, some of which are of notable local people, including James Sandy, the inventor of the invisible hinge.

The current parish church building, completed in 1839 to the design of Edinburgh architect Thomas Hamilton, dominates the skyline of the town. It is Gothic in style, with Romanesque influences, especially in the windows, and has an unusually high spire. Inside the church is the funerary hatchment of Sir George Ramsay (sixth baronet of Bamff) who was killed in a duel at Musselburgh, in April 1790 - one of the last duelling deaths in Scotland. In the church porch is preserved a late 7th-early 8th century Pictish cross-slab, with a decorated cross on one face and a single Pictish symbol ('double disc and Z-rod') on the other. It was discovered in Alyth in 1887 when ground was being levelled in front of the manse.

Alyth retains a physical link with the Napoleonic Wars in the form of a church bell from Brittany. It was captured in 1810 from a French frigate taken by HMS Horatio and was sent as a gift to Alyth by John Warden, a son of the owner of the Bamff Arms, who served on the ship. It remains on display in Alyth Town Hall.

During the Second World War, Alyth formed a close bond with units of the Polish armed forces in exile formed from troops escaping from the Nazi conquest of Poland. There was an active Scottish-Polish Society branch in the town, and several memorials were erected to commemorate the bond.

Across the road from the entrance to the Alyth Arches stands the town's old mercat cross, which served as a symbolic representation of the right to hold a regular market or fair. The main annual market was held on St Moluag's name day (25 June) every year in the vicinity of the church and nearby Woolmarket.

In the middle of the new Pitcrocknie housing development on the north east edge of the town, is a fine example of a late Neolithic or early Bronze Age Standing Stone. Called the Pitcrocknie Stone[18] it is made out of very fine garnet-bearing schist.

To the northeast of the town a hill fort, possibly of Pictish date or earlier, stands atop Barry (or 'barrow') Hill. It is considered to be one of the best preserved examples of an enclosed hilltop settlement in Scotland. The remains consist of massive collapsed stone ramparts that take advantage of the topography of the Hill. Local legend connects the fort with King Arthur, and Hector Boece's History and Chronicles of Scotland claims that Guanora, the Scottish name for Guinevere, Arthur's queen, was imprisoned here for a very short time(page 86).

Another nearby early medieval feature is a Pictish 'Class I' symbol stone in a field on Bruceton Farm somewhat to the east of Alyth. The southeast face of this slab is incised with two Pictish symbols - an arch with traces of internal ornament above a finely scrolled Pictish beast - and is one of relatively few likely still to be in its original position. It may have marked an ancient burial.

A late British Iron Age souterrain was excavated by a team of Headland Archaeology in Shanzie Farm, c 3.5. north-east of Alyth. The underground structure was roughly C-shaped in plan and measured c 35 metres in length. There was a single chamber c 5m long and an entrance to the south-east. For the most part, the souterrain had been badly plough truncated and the walls survived as a single course. The northern terminal of the souterrain was better preserved, where 3-4 courses of wall survive. The chamber here narrowed and had been filled with rubble to a depth. The walls also started to corbell inwards indicating this was originally a stone-capped structure rather than timber roofed. No evidence of an associated settlement or any other surface features were identified; these have undoubtedly been lost to the plough. The structure is typical of the 'southern Pictland group'. The souterrain had clearly been broken into during the Victorian period, but also, during medieval times. Finds included several types of late prehistoric pottery, a fragment of probable Roman pottery, an amber ring, a pair of tweezers, a brooch or clasp, two copper alloy rings and a fragment from a quern stone. The souterrain was partially backfilled allowing visitors to see the structure in plan.

Alyth Parish Church (completed in 1839) is notable for its unusually high steeple, visible from many parts of the town and from the roads and fields surrounding it.

The Church houses a rare clock made by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy, maker of clocks in many royal palaces and one of the leading horologists of the early nineteenth century. The Alyth clock, one of only two known Vulliamy clocks in Scotland, was installed in 1840 along with a bell cast at Thomas Mears' Whitechapel Foundry, where Big Ben was also cast.

The Alyth Arches are also a prominent landmark visible from the centre of the town. The grand Alyth Town Hall on Albert Street was built in 1887.Balhary House, two miles (three kilometres) south of Alyth, is a Grade A-listed late Georgian country house. The Hill of Alyth and Barry Hill dominate the town to the northwest and north.

There are several war memorials in the town: the main war memorial on the Market Muir at the southern end of Airlie Street commemorates 119 local men who died in World War I, together with 33 who died in World War II and one who died in the Falklands Campaign. Located beside this is the memorial to Alfred Anderson, who was the last surviving Scottish veteran of WW1, last survivor of the Christmas Truce of 1914, and Scotland's oldest man when he died in 2005. In the Market Square, there is a memorial to three local men who died in the Second Boer War. There are a number of other war memorials inside Alyth Parish Church, St Ninian's Church and other buildings in the town.

Five miles (eight kilometres) north of Alyth, on the River Isla, is the spectacular waterfall of Reekie Linn, from the Gaelic for "misty pool". The River Isla has carved a 45-metre-deep gorge down from the hard igneous rock of the Highlands to the softer sandstone of Strathmore, creating two falls of 6 metres and 18 metres. When the River Isla is in spate the two falls merge to create a single drop of 24 metres. At the base of the waterfall is a dark cave called Black Dub, where legend has it an outlaw once hid until the devil appeared before him in the form of a giant black dog. The outlaw was so scared that he turned himself in the next day.