The New Town

The last two hundred years have witnessed a procession of the famous and wannabe famous through its doors. Sir Walter Scott announced himself to be the author of the Waverley novels here, which everyone already knew, and William Makepeace Thackeray was nearly Iynched here when he disparaged Mary, Queen of Scots. Dickens gave enormously popular public readings in the Music Hall behind the Assembly Rooms-so popular that in 1861 the organisers oversold tickets several times over and several people were almost suffocated in the crush. He gave the reading anyway and commented later on the remarkable attentiveness of the audience in such discomfort.

No such mishap could occur today. The Assembly Rooms are efficiently run as a year-round venue for a wide range of events, from club nights to poetry readings. They really come into their own, however, at the Festival, when the splendid rooms are converted into a theatrical Fringe megavenue. Further along George Street, just before Frederick Street and the statue of William Pitt, No.60 is marked with a plaque commemorating the visit in 1811 of the radical romantic poet Shelley, on honeymoon with his first wife Harriet Westbrook who committed suicide shortly after. Continuing along the right hand side of the street, you pass two venerable Edinburgh institutions: Aitken and Niven, outfitters to the gentry, and Hamilton and Inches, the city's finest jewellers.

Turn right down North Castle Street {virtually unaltered since the late 18th century), past No.39, once the home of Sir Walter Scott-with a miniature of the statue on the Scott Monument over the door. Turn right into Queen Street.

Queen Street

Queen Street still looks much as Princes Street would have done when it was first built. Most of this long terrace of grand townhouses is now occupied by the offices of insurance companies, accountants, land agents, surveyors and civil engineers, which have left it little altered externally. For a few years after it first went up, rough gorse would have sloped down from here to the mills on the Water of Leith; today the tops of these slopes are more formally landscaped and are known as the Queen Street Gardens, once the private gardens of the Earls of Wemyss, whose townhouse was at No.64, and unfortunately still reserved for the occasional use of local key-holders.

A great scientific discovery was made at No.52, the home of Sir James Young Simpson, pioneer of anaesthesia and the first Scottish doctor to be knighted. One dark afternoon in November 1847, he and his two assistants, Dr Keith and Dr Duncan, were discovered sprawled unconscious beneath his dining room table. Upon recovery, he described his first experiment with chloroform:

Before sitting down to supper we all inhaled the fluid, and were all under the mahogany in a trice, to my wife's consternation and alarm.

The drug became positively fashionable as a clinical tool after Queen Victoria gave birth under its influence. The full story can be explored for free in the Discovery Room (open Easter-Oct Thurs 10-12; or by appointment, (0131) 225 6028). Apart from providing details on Simpson himself, the room also gives a rare glimpse inside a New Town property of the period.

Walk eastwards, past Frederick and Hanover Streets, your progress no doubt slightly hampered by the increase in traffic diverted from Princes Street. At the far end, pause outside No. 9.