Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland and one of the most dramatically sited cities in Europe — built across a series of volcanic hills and glacial ridges, with a castle on a cliff in the middle of it.
The pronunciation
Say ED-in-bruh. Not “burg”, not “berg”. The -burgh ending is a soft, almost swallowed “bruh”. Getting it wrong marks you out instantly and is forgiven immediately, but it is worth knowing.
The two towns
Edinburgh is two cities side by side, and the contrast is the whole point.
The Old Town is medieval: the Royal Mile running downhill from the castle to Holyrood Palace, with narrow alleys called closes and wynds dropping steeply away on either side. Buildings here reached eleven storeys in the 17th century, making them among the earliest high-rises anywhere, because the city was walled and could only grow upward.
The New Town, begun in 1767, is the opposite: a planned Georgian grid of broad streets, squares and crescents, built when the wealthy fled the overcrowded Old Town. It is one of the finest surviving examples of Georgian town planning in the world. Both towns together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Festival
Every August the city’s population roughly doubles. What began in 1947 as the Edinburgh International Festival now runs alongside the Fringe — the largest arts festival on earth, with over 3,000 shows in around 300 venues, most of them comedy, and anyone who can find a room can perform.
Simultaneously the city hosts the Book Festival, the Art Festival, the International Film Festival and the Military Tattoo, performed on the castle esplanade. It is exhilarating, exhausting and extremely expensive, and locals are divided between pride and a strong urge to leave town.
What to see
- Edinburgh Castle — on the rock, holding the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny.
- Arthur’s Seat — an extinct volcano in the middle of the city, walkable in under an hour, with the best view in Scotland from the top.
- The Royal Mile — the spine of the Old Town, and touristy in a way that is worth putting up with.
- The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood — an extraordinary and much-argued-over modern building, free to visit.
- Calton Hill — monuments, including an unfinished replica Parthenon locally known as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace”.
Auld Reekie
The city’s old nickname means “old smoky”, from the coal smoke that hung over the Old Town. It also had one of the worst sanitation records in Europe: residents emptied chamber pots from upper windows at ten at night with the warning cry gardyloo, from the French gardez l’eau. Pedestrians below shouted “haud yer haund” and hoped for the best.
Hogmanay
Edinburgh’s New Year celebration is among the biggest in the world, with a street party, a torchlight procession and fireworks off the castle. Scots historically made far more of Hogmanay than of Christmas, and the city still does.