Edinburgh in Watercolour: A Walk from Castle to Calton Hill
Edinburgh is one of the few British cities where the walk itself becomes part of the architecture.
The city is built on a dramatic volcanic landscape. Castle Rock rises above the Old Town, while the Royal Mile runs down its long ridge towards the Palace of Holyroodhouse. To the north lies the Georgian New Town, with its ordered streets, squares and terraces. Together, these two contrasting places form the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
The Old Town grew upwards rather than outwards. Its narrow closes and tall stone tenements descend from the Castle to Holyrood creating a dense, vertical medieval city more remisnisnet of the Italy than the rest of teh UK.
The New Town, planned from the late eighteenth century, offered a more unified planned vision. Broad streets, elegant façades, classical proportions and composed views more stronbgl;ey related to great cities such as Bath. Its worth reading my blog on Bath.
This walk follows that contrast through a selection of my watercolours which make up my Edinburgh collection. The walk begins at Edinburgh Castle and the Vennel, descends the Royal Mile through closes, kirks and courtyards, then crosses into the New Town before finishing on Calton Hill.
Along the way are buildings shaped by merchants, writers, reformers, architects and monarchs and by the hard volacanicgeology ground beneath them.
Castle Rock and the Royal Mile
The Royal Mile is not one street but a sequence of historic streets Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, Canongate and Abbey Strand and running from Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It is a “Scots mile”, slightly longer than a standard mile, and it remains
the spine of the medieval city.
Here, the city rises in tiers of stone. Tall tenements, known historically as “lands”, line the narrow street, while closes and wynds plunge steeply away on either side. The result is an architecture of compression, shadow and sudden views.
[For geeky architects like me a Scots mile is around 11% longer and is divided by 8 scotts furlongs of 1,500 scotts paces. The U.S. and U.K. miles are exactly the same apart from confusingly the U.S. survey mile whihc is 3mm longer (go figure?)]
The Vennel and Edinburgh Castle
The best way to begin is from below (just don't look up)
From the Vennel, a narrow stairway leading up from the Grassmarket, Edinburgh Castle appears suddenly above the rooftops. The view gives you everything the city is, dark volcanic rock, the castle walls, the old Flodden Wall below and the tightly packed buildings of the Old Town.
Castle Rock is the eroded remains of an ancient volcano. Glacial movement helped create the distinctive “crag and tail” formation: the steep rock of the Castle on one side and the long ridge of the Royal Mile descending towards Holyrood on the other.
My watercolour of the Vennel Steps tries to capture that sense of scale and suddenness of open views. It is one of those views where Edinburgh feels less like a city and more like a stage set.
The Witchery, Castlehill
At the top of the Royal Mile, the Witchery occupies Boswell’s Court, a restored sixteenth-century merchant’s building. Its stone arches, carved timber and heraldic details belong to the older, more intimate Edinburgh that survives between the larger landmarks (its on the left in this painting).
The name refers to the area’s darker history. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many people accused of witchcraft were executed nearby, and James VI’s interest in witch trials was expressed in his treatise Daemonologie.
It is a reminder that Edinburgh’s beautiful stone streets also carry difficult and often brutal histories which makes the city so much more interesting.
The Hub
A surprising name for such a building and a reminder that Edinburgh's history and modernity often collide.
A little further down Castlehill, the Hub’s tall Gothic spire interrupts the skyline. Designed by J. Gillespie Graham with Augustus Pugin, it was built as Victoria Hall for the Church of Scotland and is now closely associated with the Edinburgh International Festival.
The building is a reminder that the Royal Mile has continually adapted. What began as a religious and civic hall is now a festival venue, yet its Gothic silhouette still belongs firmly to the medieval streetscape around it.
Advocates’ Close and the Writers’ Museum
Advocates’ Close drops steeply from the Royal Mile towards Princes Street Gardens. It is one of those Edinburgh spaces where the city suddenly changes scale: the noise of the High Street gives way to stone walls, steps and a framed view of the Scott Monument beyond.
Nearby, Lady Stair’s Close contains Lady Stair’s House, a fine seventeenth-century town house with crow-stepped gables, turrets and an octagonal stair tower (as above). It now houses the Writers’ Museum, dedicated to Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.
This is architecture and literature intertwined. It is a reminder of the importance of words in Scottich culture and national identity.
St Giles’ Cathedral
St Giles’ Cathedral is the architectural heart of the Royal Mile. Its crown spire rises above the High Street, while the surrounding Old Town presses close around it.
The cathedral has been central to Edinburgh’s religious and civic life for centuries. John Knox preached here during the Reformation, and the later Thistle Chapel contains some of the finest Gothic Revival carving in Scotland.
For me, the building is best understood from outside, where the crown spire breaks the skyline and the stone façade seems to grow out of the crowded street.
Edinburgh City Chambers
The City Chambers began life as the Royal Exchange, designed by John Adam and built in the mid-eighteenth century. Its Palladian façade gives the High Street a more formal, civic presence, but the building also responds to Edinburgh’s extraordinary topography: the ground falls steeply towards Cockburn Street below.
The site demonstrates how Edinburgh’s architecture is often shaped as much by the land as by style. What appears to be a single building from the Royal Mile becomes a much taller structure when seen from the lower street.
The Tron Kirk and Tweeddale Court
I know what you are thinking, whats a Tron? The word "tron" is actually old French tronel (meaning balance) and refers to the heavy public weighing beam or crane used in medieval Scottish burghs to weigh and tax wholesale goods brought in by merchants! One used to sit outside the Church.
At the junction of the Royal Mile and South Bridge, the Tron Kirk marks one of the Old Town’s important crossroads. Completed in the seventeenth century, its tower again is strongly vertical.
Nearby, Tweeddale Court preserves the atmosphere of an older Edinburgh: a narrow, walled court with historic stone buildings and vaulted spaces. It is also associated with one of the city’s most notorious unsolved crimes, the murder of bank courier William Begbie in 1806.
The Tron is a building I return to because of its position. It is not simply a church; it is part of the rhythm of the street, marking a turning point in the walk.
Bakehouse Close and the Canongate Tolbooth
Further down the Royal Mile, the Canongate has a slightly quieter, more domestic character. Bakehouse Close is one of the best-preserved surviving courtyards, with crow-stepped gables, timber details and Acheson House at its centre.
Nearby, the Canongate Tolbooth is one of the street’s most memorable buildings. Its turreted bell tower, projecting clock and steep stone stair give it the character of a small civic castle. There is so much pride in Edinburghs buildings
Bakehouse Close later became familiar to many people through its appearance in Outlander, but its real appeal lies in its survival. It preserves the scale and texture of an Edinburgh that has largely disappeared elsewhere.
Canongate Kirk and the Palace of Holyroodhouse
The walk ends where the Royal Mile meets the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Canongate Kirk, consecrated in 1691, has a distinctive Dutch-influenced curved gable. Its churchyard contains the grave of Adam Smith, while the Palace beyond has been at the centre of Scottish royal history for centuries.
Holyroodhouse was rebuilt in the late seventeenth century by Sir William Bruce, combining a classical quadrangle with older corner towers. It is also associated with one of the most dramatic episodes in Mary, Queen of Scots’ life: the murder of her secretary, David Rizzio, in 1566.
At this point, the medieval city seems to dissolve into a more formal, royal landscape. My paintings of the kirk and palace try to record that transition from crowded street to ceremonial space.
The Georgian New Town
By the mid-eighteenth century, Edinburgh’s medieval Old Town had become dangerously overcrowded. The response was one of the most ambitious urban planning projects of the age, a new residential district to the north, laid out on land beside the former Nor’ Loch.
The New Town was begun following a competition won by the young architect James Craig in 1766. Its grid of streets, squares and terraces became a major expression of Enlightenment thinking and had a lasting influence on urban planning across Europe.
Where the Old Town is vertical, narrow and unpredictable, the New Town is horizontal, measured and composed. Yet it is not sterile. Its stone façades, iron railings, basement areas and long views give it a quiet but powerful architectural character.
Charlotte Square
Charlotte Square forms the western end of the New Town’s central axis. Its north side was designed by Robert Adam and is among the finest pieces of Georgian urban architecture in Britain.
The Buildimngs façades are treated like a palace with rusticated ground floors, pilasters, and pedimentss. It, creates a dignified and correct backdrop to the gardens and the life of the square.
Bute House, at No. 6, is the official residence of Scotland’s First Minister, adding a contemporary political layer to this eighteenth-century setting.
General Register House
At the eastern end of the New Town, General Register House stands where Princes Street meets North Bridge. Designed by Robert Adam and completed by his brother James, it is a refined Neoclassical building with a central dome and corner pavilions.
It was built to house Scotland’s public records and remains one of the most important archive buildings in the country. Its classical form gives the institution a sense of permanence and authority.
It is not a secluded monument but a building that helps define the edge of the New Town and the approach to Waverley.
The Mound: Royal Scottish Academy and Scottish National Gallery
The Mound is an artificial hill connecting the Old and New Towns. It was formed from earth excavated during the construction of the New Town, and it now carries two of Edinburgh’s most important Neoclassical buildings: the Royal Scottish Academy and the Scottish National Gallery. This is important as its highly unusual to create the context on which buildings sit
Designed by William Henry Playfair, they face each other across the Mound with Doric and Ionic colonnades. Their classical language helped reinforce Edinburgh’s reputation as the “Athens of the North”.
From this viewpoint, the city’s planning become especially clear. The Castle and Old Town to the south, the ordered New Town to the north, and the monumental classical buildings in between.
The Assembly Rooms and Melville Monument
George Street is the New Town at its most assured. The Assembly Rooms, opened in 1787, provide a grand classical focus, while St Andrew Square is anchored by the Melville Monument, a tall Doric column inspired by Trajan’s Column in Rome.
The Assembly Rooms were built for fashionable society, their history is closely tied to Edinburgh’s cultural life. In 1827, Sir Walter Scott publicly revealed that he was the author of the anonymous Waverley novels during a dinner held there. These were influencial novels portraying a romantic view of scottish history, indeed these were the invention of the historical novel and were the best sellers of the age.
Together, the rooms and the monument show how the New Town combined domestic elegance with civic ambition.
Jenners and the Balmoral
At the eastern end of Princes Street, two later buildings interrupt the Georgian order: Jenners and the Balmoral.
Jenners, designed by William Hamilton Beattie and opened in 1895, brought Victorian commercial architecture to the street. Its richly modelled stone façade and sculptural details make it one of Edinburgh’s most distinctive shop buildings.
The Balmoral’s clock tower rises above Waverley Station and has become one of the city’s most familiar landmarks. The clock is traditionally said to run a few minutes fast, giving travellers a little extra time to catch their train. Juts enough time for a quick kiss (ideally with someone you know!)
Edwardian and Victorian architecture seems to blend seemlessly with Edinburghs medeval and Georgian structure.
Scott Monument and Ross Fountain
Below Princes Street, Princes Street Gardens offer a moment of relief from the city’s stone and traffic. The Scott Monument rises above the trees like a Victorian Gothic spire, while the Ross Fountain adds a burst of colour and ornament at its centre.
The Scott Monument was designed by George Meikle Kemp and completed in 1844. It is about 200 feet high and is covered with figures from Sir Walter Scott’s novels. Its 287 steps lead to views across the city and towards the Firth of Forth. Sadly Kemp passed away shortley before it was finished which makes in even more poignant. Indeed he was so respected that the workmen who built the monument carried his coffin to its resting place.
The monument is one of Edinburgh’s most extraordinary pieces of architectural sculpture. Its perhaps my favorite as it encapsulated the drama of Edinburgh. its intricate silhouette works particularly well against the sky, especially when the stone is caught by low winter light.
Circus Lane and St Bernard’s Crescent
A short walk north brings you to Stockbridge, where the formal geometry of the New Town gives way to a more intimate, domestic Edinburgh. Circus Lane is one of the city’s most charming survivals: a narrow, curving mews lane lined with former stable buildings, coach houses and modest dwellings.
Circus Lane was originally laid out as a service lane serving the grander houses and gardens nearby. Its buildings were not intended as principal residences but as stables, carriage houses, accommodation for servants and storage space. This explains its modest scale, simple façades and the way the lane follows a gentle curve rather than the strict grid of the surrounding streets (better for carriages)
Over time, many of these working buildings were converted into homes. The result is an unusually attractive street where the original mews character remains visible in the low rooflines, small windows, cobbled surface and garden walls, while the buildings now have the settled, domestic quality of a much-loved residential lane. It is the most attractive street apparently concluded using eye tracking technology.
Nearby, St Bernard’s Crescent offers a contrast. Designed in the early nineteenth century, it curves around a quiet garden in a sweeping arc of strong Doric porticoes. Where Circus Lane is intimate and informal, St Bernard’s Crescent is composed, classical and architectural.
Together, they show two sides of Edinburgh’s nineteenth-century urban life
New College, St Mary’s Cathedral and the Futures Institute
The New Town’s edges contain some of Edinburgh’s most ambitious later buildings.
New College, designed by William Henry Playfair, stands dramatically on the Mound with its twin towers overlooking Princes Street. Its Assembly Hall has hosted the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and briefly housed the Scottish Parliament before the purpose-built Holyrood parliament was completed.
Nearby, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral rises above the West End with its tall Gothic spire. Further south, the Edinburgh Futures Institute occupies David Bryce’s former Royal Infirmary, a major Scottish Baronial building given a new institutional life.
Calton Hill and Further Afield
The final part of this survey leaves the central streets and looks at Edinburgh from a distance: from its hilltop monuments, its coast and, in one case, from far beyond the city.
Calton Hill and the National Monument
Calton Hill is the best place to understand Edinburgh as a whole. From its summit, the Castle, Old Town, New Town, Arthur’s Seat and the Firth of Forth can be seen together. Its one of the most memorable views in Europe for an architect like me.
The National Monument was intended as a memorial to those killed in the Napoleonic Wars. Designed by William Henry Playfair and Charles Robert Cockerell, it was conceived in the image of the Parthenon in Athens. Construction stopped in 1829 when funding ran out, leaving the unfinished colonnade that has become one of the city’s most recognisable silhouettes. The incompleteness actually helps the drama and relationship to the Parthenon placing Edinburcgh as the “Athens of the North”.
Rosslyn Chapel
A short journey south of Edinburgh brings you to Rosslyn Chapel at Roslin. Founded in the mid-fifteenth century, it is one of Scotland’s most extraordinary late medieval buildings, its interior densely covered with carved stone.
The chapel is famous for the Apprentice Pillar and for the legends that have gathered around it, particularly after its appearance in The Da Vinci Code. But its real power lies in the craftsmanship and symobolism with every surface seems to carry a story. Go See!
Leith, Newhaven and the Royal Yacht Britannia
Edinburgh’s relationship with the sea is often overlooked. At Leith, the Royal Yacht Britannia is moored at Ocean Terminal, while nearby Newhaven retains the character of a historic fishing port.
Britannia served the Royal Family for more than four decades and travelled around a million nautical miles. The Newhaven Lighthouse, built in the nineteenth century, is a much smaller but equally characterful marker of the city’s maritime edge.
The vastness of the coastline is a brilliant contrast to density of the city.
Eilean Donan Castle
Finally, a painting that takes the survey far beyond Edinburgh to Eilean Donan Castle, on a small tidal island in the western Highlands.
The castle was founded in the thirteenth century and destroyed in 1719 during the Jacobite rising. It lay as a ruin for almost two centuries before being reconstructed in the early twentieth century by the wonderfully named Lt Col John MacRae-Gilstrap.
Although it is not part of an Edinburgh walk, it belongs to the wider Scottish architectural imagination: a castle reduced to its setting, water, stone and sky.
A Final word.
Edinburgh rewards the walker because it constantly changes scale. One moment you are in a narrow medieval close the next, you emerge into the grandeur of George Street or look across the city from Calton Hill.
The Old Town tells the story of a crowded, defensive medieval capital. The New Town tells the story of confidence and classical urban planning. Between them lies a city that has never quite stopped negotiating with its landscape. A thing you become aware while walking the city (bloody hills!)
About the Paintings
About the Artist Christian Coop, MSAI, is an architect and artist documenting the UK’s built heritage through one of the largest contemporary collections of architectural watercolours. With 30 years of experience an architect and a Design Director at leading global firms, his work has been featured by CNN, the BBC, and the RIBA Journal. He is currently an Associate Partner and Design Director at HTA.
You can explore the full Edinburgh collection, along with galleries of London, Paris, New York, Venice and other cities, at Freehandlines.
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