With a stunning castle set atop a volcano and a historic old town where it looks like the 18th century, never mind the 21st, has yet to arrive, few visitors ever forget their first sight of epic Edinburgh.
Intoxicating Tales
The Scottish capital does not so much wear its history on its sleeve as overflow with intoxicating tales of feuding warlords, medieval villains and all sorts of Royal intrigue. Edinburgh today, though, is also the capital of a nation that recently regained its first parliament in 300 years and with this role has come a new sense of confidence that has spiced up the city’s traditional charm.
UNESCO World Heritage
Edinburgh’s origins date way back to the days when Highland clans vied with Lowland Scots and the English for control of the strategic land that lay between the wide sweep of the Firth of Forth and the rising hulk of the Pentland Hills. This grand location, graced with volcanoes, rugged hills, water on two sides and the ever changing weather conditions that shift its hues and moods, has always given the city something special. The combination of its natural setting and its preserved architecture has led to plaudits like the ‘Athens of the North’ and more recently recognition from UNESCO with both the city’s medieval Old Town and Georgian New Town commended on the World Heritage List.
Each Era Unfolds with its Own Legends
Throughout Scotland’s turbulent history Edinburgh has always been at the heart of things, whether it was when the city’s castle held out against Bonnie Prince Charlie during his ill fated quest to reclaim the British throne or when it was at the epicentre of the seminal Scottish Enlightenment. Each of these chapters has left its own indelible mark on the capital.
Delving into Edinburgh is like leafing through the pages of a musty historical novel as each era unfolds with its own legends and tall stories, whether it be the murky world of the ‘Body Snatchers’, Burke and Hare, or the duplicitous deceits of Deacon Brodie, the local villain who was the inspiration for Edinburgh born writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s infamous Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Edinburgh is a city of layers, both obvious or otherwise, a world class city, the most compelling in the land and it is the city that everyone (bar a few jealous Glaswegians perhaps) falls instantly in love with. Come to Edinburgh and within an hour you will be planning your next visit.
