David I founded Montrose around 1140 as Sallorch, a charter scribbled into existence on the strength of a good natural harbour at the mouth of the South Esk. The name evolved into Munross by 1178, then settled into Montrose. Folk etymology turned it into the Mount of Roses, and the town's motto leans into the legend: Mare ditat, rosa decorat, the sea enriches, the rose adorns. The reality was less floral. Danes plundered the place repeatedly. Edward I of England turned up during the Wars of Independence with thirty thousand men and, by some accounts, stripped King John de Balliol of his royal insignia inside Montrose Castle, an act of public humiliation that other sources locate at Brechin. The castle was destroyed by a storm not long after.

The skyline today is dominated by the 220-foot steeple of the Old and St Andrew's Church, designed by James Gillespie Graham and finished between 1832 and 1834. The wealthy merchants who built eighteenth-century Montrose did something peculiar: they put their grand houses gable-end to the street rather than facing it broadside, so the locals became known as gable-enders. The High Street remains improbably wide, leading down to picturesque closes where secret gardens still hide behind stone. Just outside town stands the House of Dun, designed by William Adam and built in 1730 for David Erskine, 13th Laird of Dun. Provost Alexander Christie oversaw something even more remarkable: the establishment of Scotland's first lunatic asylum here in 1781, founded by Susan Carnegie of Charleton, treating paupers and private patients alike, and surviving as Sunnyside Royal Hospital until 2011.

The bronze statue at the harbour shows a St Bernard standing watch, and the dog had a name and a story that locals will tell you if you ask. Bamse, which means teddy bear in Norwegian, arrived in Montrose during the Second World War aboard the Royal Norwegian Navy minesweeper Thorodd, with Captain Erling Hafto, his owner, who had registered him as crew. Bamse stood over six feet on his hind legs. He broke up sailor fights in dock pubs. He travelled unescorted on the buses to round up crew members late returning from outlying drinking houses. He saved the life of Lieutenant Commander Olav Nilsen at Dundee Docks. He once clamped his paws on a knife-wielding assailant and ended the matter. When Bamse died in July 1944, Montrose schools closed and 800 children lined the route of his funeral. On 17 October 2006 the Duke of York unveiled the statue, paid for by donations split evenly between Scotland and Norway.

Just west of town the South Esk widens into Montrose Basin, the largest inland saltwater basin in the United Kingdom, a tidal lagoon nearly three miles across and a designated nature reserve of international importance. In October and November some 38,000 birds use it. Ospreys hunt the shallows in summer. Kingfishers flash past. The mute swan population is significant enough that conservationists consider this one of its most important British habitats. East of town the Blue Flag beach stretches for three miles of sand, though it is losing the contest with the sea. Erosion has carried away substantial stretches of dune; in November 2023 Storm Babet tore three metres off the beach in a single night, collapsing the promenade walkway. The Save Our Sands campaign has been arguing for serious coastal protection since 2009.

The biggest employer in Montrose today is GlaxoSmithKline, which makes active ingredients against HIV and other conditions at its plant on the north side of town; the plant was saved from closure in 2006. The pharmacy is a long way from the smuggling of the eighteenth century, when Montrose was a major centre for goods coming in under the customs officers' noses. The town's most famous fugitive was James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, who spent his last night on Scottish soil here on 4 February 1716 before sailing to French exile after the failure of the 1715 Jacobite rising. Thirty years later, in February 1746, the largest naval engagement of his son Charles Edward Stuart's war would be fought in Montrose Harbour itself.