When Glasgow banned punk bands in the 1970s, Paisley welcomed them. Two years ago, the town elected Mhairi Black, a fiery 20-year-old nationalist who had yet to complete her university exams, making her Britain’s youngest member of Parliament in at least 185 years. That also made her the face of Scotland’s anti-establishment revolt, one that ended decades of Labour Party rule and put the nationalists in charge.

“Paisley is kind of synonymous with Scotland,” said Ms. Black, who recently conceded that she found Parliament in London “depressing” and was ready to quit, one recent afternoon. “There was a lack of confidence, but that is changing.”

Paisley was once one of the richest towns in Scotland, exporting intricately woven shawls featuring the namesake pattern made fashionable by the young Queen Victoria (and, much later, by The Beatles and by Jimi Hendrix, who is featured in his own mural in Paisley). It was also home to the Coats thread-making empire, which at one point produced 90 percent of the world’s sewing thread.

Monuments to its past wealth dot the town. With only 76,000 inhabitants, Paisley has the highest density of buildings listed as architecturally and historically significant in Scotland, outside of Edinburgh. They include the Baptist church; a domed Victorian observatory; an imposing neoclassical town hall; and the abbey, the cradle of the royal House of Stewart. The painter and playwright John Byrne is from Paisley, as are the actor Gerard Butler and the singer Paolo Nutini, “the best voice since Otis Redding,” in the opinion of one local resident.

But a mere five-minute drive away is Ferguslie Park, a notorious housing estate, parts of which rank at the bottom of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. Child poverty is high, and knife fights not uncommon. Advertised on the white board in the community center: a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and a coffee afternoon with Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland.