Edinburgh: Old and New

West End of Edinburgh Castle

The oldest parts of Old Town Edinburgh--the stone castle, abbey, kirks, commercial and municipal buildings, residences, streets, closes, and wynds--are medieval, some from the 12th century, built on top of old, high, defensible, volcanic rock scraped by glaciers. 

A Close off High Street

A Close off Grassmarket

This stony site itself was an eminently defensible place, and the closes and wynds that people built there were part of Edinburgh's defenses: closes are private alleyways, many closable with gates, and wynds are very narrow passageways between buildings--sometimes just stairways--heading up to or diving down from the road running the length of Old Town's stone spine foundation; they created places to hold off from above narrowed streams of attackers. 
 


The Scotsman Steps, in the tradition of wynds but not built until 1899, are considered a thoroughfare by the city; they connect North Bridge up in Old Town with Waverley Station on Market Street in New Town below it. They were transformed into a work of art by Martin Creed in 2011: each of the 104 steps is a beautiful, different kind of marble.   

Neoclassical New Town

Even New Town Edinburgh is old, with work on it begun in 1767, during the reign of King George III, and its buildings imitate architectural styles--classical and gothic--that are older yet. In among New Town's prevalent neoclassical Georgian row houses, one of its most prominent buildings, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, built in 1889, is neo-gothic.

Neo-gothic New Town: The Pageant Frieze of Scottish Historical Portraits

Crow-Stepped Gable in Old Town

Miralles's Upside-Down Crow Steps at New Scottish Parliament

There's more mixing of old and new; one of the newest buildings in Edinburgh has echoes of the oldest. Architect Enric Miralles, for the Scottish Parliament Buildings, used upside-down crow-steps as a design element in the office window alcoves for members of the Scottish Parliament.


And the 1998 addition to the 1866 National Museum of Scotland has a castle-like round stone tower.

Dean Village

Garden Gate in Dean Village

Dean Village, founded with its mills on the river called the Water of Leith in the 12th century and now a part of the city, has strikingly new elements. 

And at the east end of Old Town, newer parts have been added onto older buildings, like the 16^th-and-17^th-century Palace of Holyroodhouse built onto the 12^th-century Holyrood Abbey.

Holyroodhouse and Holyrood Abbey from Salisbury Crags

Golden Boy and Dome on the University of Edinburgh's Old College

To see more adding of the newer onto the older, you can look east from the roof of the National Museum and see the dome and the gilt figure that represents youth carrying the torch of knowledge. The dome and figure were added a hundred years after the construction of the University of Edinburgh’s Old College, originally called the New College because it replaced older-yet buildings. 

Stone Sphinx on the Roof on Supreme Courts of Scotland

Stone Sphinxes on the Roof of the National Gallery of Scotland

The city is stacked and piled with old stone buildings with slate roofs and stone spires and statues on top, with stone streets, closes, wynds, and walks between them.

Queen Victoria on the Roof of the Royal Scottish Academy

 

Cathedral of St. Giles, the High Kirk

Looking at photographs of the stone of Edinburgh can easily lead to a sense that the city is stony or hardened, grey or dismal. It isn't. Walking through and on all of that old stone brings constant reminders that we're just the most recent among those who have been glad to be here.

Stone in the Walkway through Makar's Court of Lady Stair's Close

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