From Edinburgh's Medieval Old Town built on a crag with an ice-age tail - to the world-renowned Georgian New Town, which Edinburgh Castle looks down upon. An overview Edinburgh: Featuring the Classically-influenced architecture and temples, in the city, which Edinburgh-born Robert Louis Stevenson described, so well, when writing 'Picturesque Notes' (1879); and the firing of the famous 'One O' Click Gun' from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle.
Film Script
"Beautiful as she is she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic and all the more since she set herself off with some Greek airs and erected classic temples on her crags. In a word and above all she is a curiosity".
Words written as Robert Louis Stevenson looked out, on his native city, in the second half of, the 19th century.
Edinburgh's changed much since, but has steered clear from erecting buildings, that could've blotted out her distinctive views. As we look now from her main street (Princes Street), or from her gardens (Princes Street Gardens), in the valleys between, the Greek-airs of her classical temples and Gothic towers stacked upon her crags, are still there, for us all to see.
Then, if we look above all this; on the top of this crag, there's a fairytale castle, which overlooks the whole city. Edinburgh's historic landscape is a curiosity worth exploring. It's a landscape that could've been designed as a theatrical stage; and this stage has seen a good few dramatic scenes played out on it. Our aim is to help you get familiarised with all the interesting and unusual phenomena, which is crammed into Edinburgh and a picture that whets the appetite and gives you a desire, to explore our nooks and crannies a little further.
So let's get started; I'm Ric Matthews, and the native city of Stevenson is also, my home town. Edinburgh is small for a city, and I think this is its charm. It's fairly easy, to get around here and a day ticket for the bus service works well, as the areas to visit are spread over two steep hills.
On the highest of these hills is the city's 'Old Town', stretching for about a mile from top to bottom. A backbone, with narrow wynds and closes descending the slopes on either side. 'Bearing a striking resemblance to a turtle' says Hugo Arnot; another city native that lived, a century before Stevenson. This was a time, described by some as, the beginning of, Edinburgh's golden age; yet less kind writers back then would compare the burgh's outline to a smelly, old herringbone.
The medieval, old town became dangerously overcrowded; buildings rising higher and higher, often catching fire or toppling, and the sewerage system wasn't great either; with the warning shout of, 'gardyloo', the slops and everything else were thrown straight out the high windows, running down the streets and lanes to the loch below. Something had to be done as this old town was creaking around its edges, and wanted to escape its perch like existence.
Hence the construction of a bridge; approved by the city fathers. This bridge would span a valley to the north of the old town, and give the burgh better access to its port down at Leith. 'The North Bridge' allowed Edinburgh to venture forth, building and developing a New Town on the adjacent ridge. In the following, eighty years, further New Towns developed, on the northern slopes, of this ridge. They are, collectively known as, 'The New Town'.
"The new town" with elegant squares, grand neoclassical facades, and symmetrical streets, (wide enough to turn a horse and carriage), has some fine examples of Georgian architecture. Describing it-self as 'The Athens of the North' Edinburgh even attempted to build its own Parthenon, on the close by, Calton Hill.
A playground for the affluent and the literati; this was a city that drew like a magnet people that could best be described as 'those with a curiosity and interest in how to free mankind from ignorance and poverty'. It was after all 'The Age of Enlightenment' in Europe; an age which gave emphasis to reason and science in philosophy. Edinburgh was in there, and a fully participating member, establishing itself as the centre of Scotland's very own enlightenment. Now here in this new town was a splendid feeling of space and airiness.
Watch out though! This was also a new town that gave rise to another of Stevenson's observations 'its draughty parallelograms', especially at the junctions of these airy symmetrical streets; designed to aid, as he thought, rather than protect from the sometimes cold, damp and dreich weather, which can blow up from its northern exposure and howl through these streets.
Some of the palatial homes that New Town residents occupied eventually became home to stuffy bankers and financial institutes. They now in turn are vacating some of their impressive New Town offices, and relocating in purpose built financial centres. Meanwhile the streets and squares of the New Town have given themselves over to restaurants, clubs, bars and boutique hotels. They easily squeeze themselves into the neo-classical buildings, which line the ridge of this lesser hill. These changes in the New Town, give the place an upbeat and lively cosmopolitan feel.
