Edinburgh City Guide - Scotland Best Place - travel & Discover

Edinburgh's unique coupling of medieval Old Town and classical New Town, each of enormous distinction in its own right, has created a city of extraordinary richness and diversity, without parallel anywhere else in the world. Its architecture and historical importance set Edinburgh apart, and give it a uniqueness that is a consequence of its historic existence as a significant European capital from the Renaissance period. Home to the prestigious University of Edinburgh, it is widely recognised to have been a major centre of thought and learning. The particular nature of this city's duality is unusual. On the one hand, on a high ridge is the ancient Old Town, while in contrast, and set apart on another side, is the 18th century New Town. The former is on a spectacular site, the skyline pierced by the castle, the soaring Gothic spire of Highland Toolbooth St John, and the robust, nationally symbolic Imperial Crown Spire of St Giles. This feat of medieval architecture looks down over the New Town, which in contrast appears as a serene sea of ordered classicism, the whole framed and articulated by neoclassical buildings of world-class distinction. The Old Town of Edinburgh is of substantial interest in its own right. It contains two planned 12th century burghs, two early royal palaces, a medieval abbey, and a wealth of ancient buildings. The national tradition of building tall reached its climax in Edinburgh, with tenements that must have been the world's tallest buildings of their age, some of which have been preserved to this day. Colton Hill is famous for its collection of historic monuments, which form some of the city's most important landmarks. One of the most striking is the National Monument, inspired by the Parthenon in Athens. Intended to commemorate the Scottish servicemen who died in the Napoleonic Wars, it was never completed, leaving just the twelve columns which can be seen today. Nelson's monument replaced an existing mass on Colton Hill's summit, with a signal tower high enough to be visible to ships on the fourth. The monument commemorates Admiral Lord Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The range of hills, some remote, rise almost 600 meters high and stretch approximately 26 kilometers from the outskirts of Edinburgh to Lanarkshire. The old town is dominated by Edinburgh Castle, a medieval military fortress extended in Renaissance times with a palace square, and by army barracks in the mid-18th century. Edinburgh Castle sits on volcanic rock, the Craig of Glacial Craig and Tail, with the Tail being the Royal Mile tapering mound which falls down to Holyrood House. Of special interest are 12th century St. Margaret's Chapel and the Great Hall of 1500. At the other end of the Royal Mile are Holyrood Abbey and the Palace of Holyrood House, one of the wealthiest abbeys in Scotland. It was adapted by the Scottish kings from the late 15th century. The palace today appears largely as it was rebuilt in the 1670s, though some earlier elements have survived. Fronting the castle is a gently sloping rectilinear space called the Castle Esplanade, which offers a splendid view over the city. With its historical streets and squares and thriving cultural scene, the city of Edinburgh offers a perfect balance between things traditional and contemporary. Designed by the architect William Henry Playfair, the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery of Scotland stand in the heart of Edinburgh. It is one of the nation's most visited attractions and continues to play a pivotal role in the cultural history of Scotland. Playfair had chosen the Dork Order and designed a programme of sculptural decoration to reflect its inhabitants' interest in ornament and design. For scenic effect, he made a deliberate contrast in his designs for the National Gallery building and opted for the graceful Ionic Order. It is made up of three interconnected buildings. The National Gallery of Scotland is home to a major part of Scotland's impressive national collection of fine art. The Palace of Holyrood House, the official residence in Scotland of Her Majesty the Queen, stands at the end of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, against the spectacular backdrop of Arthur's Seat. This fine Baroque palace is closely associated with Scotland's rich history. In front of the palace, the Queen's Gallery displays changing exhibitions from the Royal Collection. The gallery was designed by Benjamin Tyndall, architect of the former Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon School. The Queen's Gallery was funded by the Royal Collections Trust. The Holyrood Free Church was designed by architect John Henderson in 1850. Both buildings had fallen into disuse by the end of the 19th century. The Parliament House and High Court of the Justiciary comprises the two-storey Elplan Parliament House, a key building of the Scottish Renaissance designed by Sir James Murray from the 1630s, with neoclassical additions and extensions by Robert Read and others in the early 19th century. The equestrian statue of Charles II, which stands in Parliament Square, used to be white in colour. It was given to the city as a memorial of its support of Charles II and his ascension to the throne. The city chambers are the work of John and Robert Adam. The plan is a private square protected from the street by a single-storey rusticated screen. It had initially been planned to make the city chambers house several council halls, a library, and covered accommodation for a merchant's exchange. It was only in 1893 that the local authority took sole possession of the site. The shopping arcade, which was added later, was replaced by a narrower design in 1901, and tasteful wings were added to the building in 1934. Prominent in the courtyard is the statue of Alexander the Great, training his horse Brucephalus. The Royal Mile is Edinburgh's historic highway, which connects two of Edinburgh's most important attractions, Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood House. The street is actually made up of several streets. Starting from the castle at the top, these are the Esplanade, Castle Hill, Lawn Market, High Street, Netherbough, Canongate, and Abbey Strand. Collectively known as the High Street, the Royal Mile is the centre of Edinburgh's Old City, the site of many historic events through the ages, and today the most popular tourist destination for visitors to the city. The Gothic Spire of the Hub, the highest point in central Edinburgh, towers over the surrounding buildings at the top of the Royal Mile. Now the home of the Edinburgh International Festival, the Hub was designed in collaboration by Edinburgh architect J. Gillespie Graham and the famous Gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin, and constructed between 1842 and 1845. Hulled rubble was historically the main building material used in Edinburgh, except for the grandest buildings, and it continued to be used for tenements well into the 19th century. However, stone is the basic building block of Edinburgh's paving, stairs, walls, and roofs, in its predominant form of silver-grey ashlar. Boundaries are important in maintaining the character and quality of the space in the Old Town. They provide enclosure, to find many pedestrian links, and restrict views out of the spaces. Stone is the predominant material, though hulled and brick walls can also be found. The nobility built townhouses, which also contributed to the high quality of the domestic architecture of this period. From as early as the 16th century, building control was enforced through the Dean of Guild, a local magistrate. For example, as a precaution against fire, all roofs had to be made of tile or slate from 1621, and in 1674 this was extended to building facades, which henceforth had to be in stone. By the end of the 19th century, the Old Town had lost much of its population as a result of the growth of the New Town. In 1892, Sir Patrick Geddes proposed to regenerate it by attracting back the university, the bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia. The High Kirk of St. Giles in the High Street is of medieval origin, but the present external appearance dates essentially from the early 19th century. That St. Giles, a 7th century hermit and later abbot who lived in France, became the patron of both the town of Edinburgh and the church probably stems from the ancient ties between Scotland and France. St. Giles's contains almost 200 memorials honoring distinguished Scots and remembering Scottish soldiers. Most of these memorials date from the 19th century and early 20th century. St. Giles's also has a notable collection of stained-glass windows. The topmost tracery of the Burns window contains a glorious sunburst of love blossoming like a red-red rose. The Burns-Jones window depicts the crossing of the Jordan in the upper section and the figures of three Old Testament heroines in the lower section. Stained-glass windows have been admired for their utility and beauty since ancient Rome, when pieces of colored glass were assembled into patterned window frames. In Europe, the art of stained glass reached its height between 1150 and 1500 when magnificent windows were created for the great cathedrals. The basic ingredients for making glass are sand and wood ash, also called potash. The mixture is melted into a liquid which, when cooled, becomes glass. To color the glass, certain powdered metals are added to the mixture while the glass is still molten. Molten glass can be blown into a sausage shape then slit on the side before being flattened into a sheet. It can also be spun with a pontil iron into a round sheet called a crown. A window's pictorial image is created by arranging the different pieces of colored glass over the design drawn on a piece of board. If fine details such as shadows or outlines are required, the artist paints them on the glass with black paint. To assemble the window, pieces of colored and painted glass are laid out on the design board with the edges of each piece fitted into H-shaped strips of lead called cames. These cames are soldered to one another so that the panel is secure. When the panel is completed, putty is inserted between the glass and the lead cames for waterproofing. The entire composition is then stabilized with an iron frame called an armature and mounted in the window. In 1992, the truly magnificent organ occupying the south transept was installed, complete with its 4,000 pipes. The Thistle Chapel, designed by Robert Lorimer, was completed in 1911. It contains stalls for the 16 knights, the sovereign's stall, and two royal stalls. The chapel contains a wealth of detail, both religious and heraldic, and much of it uniquely Scottish, including angels playing bagpipes. The Order of the Thistle has its roots in the Middle Ages, but the present-day Order was largely created in 1687 by King James VII of Scotland. The Order of the Thistle is Scotland's great order of chivalry, and membership is considered to be one of the country's highest honours. Along the sides of the chapel are the knights' stalls, which are kept by lavishly carved canopies with the helms and crests of the knights rising above. Prince's Street Gardens, in the heart of Edinburgh's city centre, were once a lake called Norlock. The loch, which for centuries had served as a trash dump of Edinburgh, was drained in order to improve access from the new town to the old town. Later, the Norlock was transformed into the beautiful Prince's Street Gardens. As the years passed, lawns, formal flowerbeds, specimen trees, shrubs, statues, and monuments were slowly introduced, reflecting fashion, fancy, and the needs of the people. With its 24,000 plants, the floral clock was painted in 1903, the first in the world. For the first 100 years of its existence, West Prince's Street Gardens was a private amenity of the Prince's Street proprietors. In 1876, this tract was opened to the public, which had always had access to the eastern gardens. The mound, a causeway of rubble and earth from the construction of the new town, forms the division between the two gardens. Flowers are set out in beds that are changed several times a year. Recreational areas are interspersed among the lawns, flowerbeds, and groves. But it is the combination of that timeless rock with its historic castle, the sweeping lawns, the fragrance of roses, the whispers of the wind in the trees, the splashes of colorful flowers, the fretwork silhouette in gray of the royal mile above, the pervading sense of history all around that is particularly evocative. The gardens run along the south side of Prince's Street and are divided by the mound. East Prince's Street Gardens run from the mound to Waverly Bridge and cover some 34,000 square meters. The larger West Prince's Street Gardens cover 120,000 square meters and extend to the adjacent churches of St. John's and St. Cuthbert's near Lothian Road in the west. The Waverly Railway Station is located in the city center between Edinburgh Old Town and the New Town. The valley is bridged by the 1897 North Bridge, a three-span iron and steel bridge which passes high above the station's eastern section, and Waverly Bridge, which, by means of ramps, affords one of the main entrances to the station. The New Town developed as a suburban residential area for the nobility and merchant classes. The city, the charitable trusts, and the aristocratic landowners who promoted the area insisted upon using the finest material, since they saw it as an enduring monument. It rapidly proved to be attractive to government and drew this element of the city away from the Old Town. The New Town would soon become the location of some of the finest public and commercial monuments of the neoclassical revival in Europe. Charlotte Square is Robert Adam's crowning glory, and with its classic edifices, handsome squares, and spacious thoroughfares, the epitome of what Robert Burns called the heavenly Hanoverianism of Edinburgh's New Town. Adam was specifically commissioned to provide a unified scheme of townhouses. The regal north and south sides of the square provide it, with 100-meter-long palace frontages. Their pedimented centerpieces, Corinthian pillars, and balustrades mirror one another. On the skyline, crowning sphinxes stand guard over pyramid-shaped roofs. The whole concept has a thrilling swagger to it. Even the chimney stacks have a dignified air, yet with no sense of extravagance. Only the north side of the square had been completed by 1792, when Adam died. Construction, with delays due to the war with France, continued for almost another quarter of a century. But the result as we see it today is almost as he intended, except for Robert Reed's monumental domed church, now West Register House. Charlotte Square is rightly recognized as a major achievement in European civic architecture. Many of the front steps in the square have iron boot scrapers, used to remove mud from one's shoes before entering a house. And built into the iron railings, inverted trumpets in which the link boys, who lighted one's way home, could snuff out their torches, rather than by rubbing them against the expensive stonework. Throughout the New Town, the multitudinous scratch marks from matches used to light these torches can be seen to this day. Adam's designs included only the facades of the terraces. The houses themselves were built in the same way as in the rest of the New Town, with plots made available to prospective residents or builders, who would construct the house. The sole difference was that in Charlotte Square, one of the conditions was that the front wall should be built to conform to Adam's elevation. The end and rear walls of the terraces were not by Adam, and they vary considerably in style. Adam's designs for Charlotte Square proved to be immensely influential in Edinburgh. In 1802, the ground to the north of Queen Street Gardens was laid out as an extension to the New Town, the second or northern New Town. Scotland's new Parliament sits at the foot of Edinburgh's famous Royal Mile, in front of the spectacular Holyrood Park and Salisbury Crags. Constructed from a mixture of steel, oak and granite, the complex building has been hailed as one of the most innovative designs in Britain today. Construction of the building commenced in June 1999, and the members of the Scottish Parliament held their first debate in the new building on September 7, 2004. The formal opening by Queen Elizabeth took place on October 9, 2004. Enric Miralles, the Catalan architect who designed the building, died before its completion. The tenement is the dominant building form within the conservation area. Short streets and respect for the topography limits the apparent mass of any one building, and creates a fusion between tenements and other building forms. This contributes to an appearance of density, a close-knit character and cohesive groupings. Scales are often made larger than they really are by the drama of the topology, the narrow and irregular width of plots of land, the apparent verticality of much development, changing viewing levels and restricted void to solid relationships. Building lines are not set at predetermined grids and angles, but respond to natural features and contours. The consequence is that much of the organic character of the old town is still retained, and building lines sweeping along the contours create a sculptural appearance to many streets. Respect for building lines and heights are essential in successfully uniting buildings from different periods. There are currently 38 conservation areas in Edinburgh, including the city centre, Victorian suburbs and former villages. Each conservation area has its own unique character and appearance. This designation permits the area to demonstrate a commitment to positive action for the safeguarding and enhancement of its character and appearance. The conservation area ranks as one of the most important in the United Kingdom in terms of both its architectural and historic interest. Its significance is reflected in the extensive number of statutorily listed buildings, the number of tourists that visit the area, its outstanding status, and its international recognition as part of the UNESCO-designated Edinburgh Old and New Town World Heritage Site. Since the 1930s, numerous initiatives to restore and rehabilitate the old townhouses have been undertaken. The conservation area includes numerous buildings of outstanding architectural and historic importance and international significance. This is reflected in the large number of buildings within the conservation area, which are statutorily listed for their historic importance, with around 90 being of national importance. Although these buildings have individual qualities, often exhibiting European or classical influences, they possess strong elements of the local character that reinforce the distinctiveness of the conservation area. As Edinburgh developed, open space around important buildings was enclosed as gardens or for burial grounds. The natural features of the glacial landscape also left some areas of the open space that were most difficult to develop. This has resulted in many small areas of green open spaces within the dense urban structure that have a wide diversity of character and irregular distribution. These now contribute to the overall setting of the buildings and are valuable spaces for wildlife and amenities. With its more than 4,500 listed historical buildings in both the Old Town and the New Town, Edinburgh was included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1995.