Dumfries and Galloway is a Scottish administrative area. It consists of the county of Dumfriesshire in the east and the historic region of Galloway in the west. In turn, Galloway included two counties, Wigtownshire and the Stewarty of Kirkcudbright. The administrative headquarters are at Dumfries, the only large town in the area.
Outwith Dumfries, much of Dumfries and Galloway consists of farmland with small towns and villages, large areas of wild moorland and extensive forests. The combination of many historic towns, castles and abbeys, a long coastline with many sandy beaches, and miles of unspoilt scenery make Dumfries and Galloway a tourist paradise, especially Kirkcudbrightshire.
Famous residents include the poet Robert Burns and the physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
The small town of Lockerbie became internationally known as the place where Pam Am flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb planted by a terrorist organisation backed by Syria and Iran, shortly before Christmas 1988.