The New Town

The streets of the New Town are delightful to wander around. Elegant, imposing and harmonious, this rectangular grid of broad straight streets is the largest expanse of 18th- and early 19th century architecture in Europe, comparable in Britain only with Bath, Cheltenham and York. This speculative property development for wealthy citizens was primarily intended as residential, but today many of the streets of the New Town are dominated by shops, banks and grand business headquarters. It is still very much the preserve of the well-heeled, although more and more trendy shops, restaurants and bars are opening up. An area of the city that used to be renowned for its snobbery and select social cliques is gradually becoming more accessible.

Growth of a Vision

Different from the slow organic growth of the Old Town in every respect, the New Town was first formally proposed in the 1750s, after one of the stacked-up 'lands' on the High Street collapsed with considerable loss of life. A competition for its design was held, which was won by the 23-year-old architect James Craig.

The development of the proposal proceeded in three main stages, still clearly discernible today. First came the rectangular plan: George Street was constructed along the top of the natural ridge, with the 'Lang Gait' (now called Princes Street) running parallel below it to the south, and Queen Street parallel to the north. These three perfectly straight streets end in St Andrew Square in the east, and Charlotte Square in the west, and were named in honour of George III and his family. Almost at once Edinburgh saw a 'great flitting' of the gentry from their crumbling piles on the hill into these stately new homes, leaving the Old Town to sink into squalor.

By the 1820s the second New Town had gone up on similar lines, further down the hill to the north, with Drummond Place and Royal Circus linked by Great King Street. This development was less austere and altogether more showy, and has remained architecturally more intact and closer to its residential intentions. Finally the Earl of Moray caved in to the temptation to develop for profit the land he owned to the west, which he did in some style in the streets surrounding the monumental Moray Place. Like the Old Town, Craig's classical ranks have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995.

This walk takes about three hours, at a leisurely pace. The main highlights are Calton Hill, George Street, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Charlotte Square, and equally the splendour of the surroundings and the many fine views. There are two opportunities for a particularly impressive view of the whole city and its setting: the first is from the Scott Monument, at the start of the walk, the other is from the top of Calton Hill a little way into the walk.

From the Scott Monument, look east to see the North Bridge (which made the New Town possible in the first place) soaring over the expanse of Waverley Station's roof.

The Scott Monument

Open daily April-Sept 9am-6pm, Oct-Mar 9am-3pm; admission £3.00; recently reopened after expensive and inevitably controversial restoration.

Love it or loathe it, the Scott Monument is probably the second most famous of Edinburgh's landmarks. Dickens wrote to a friend: 'I am sorry to report the Scott Monument a failure. It is like the spire of a Gothic church taken off and stuck in the ground.' But its Gothic excess contrasts well with the clean classicism of the New Town, and is entirely appropriate to the romantic imagination of her most famous son. Not many people read Sir Walter Scott's historical novels these days-their rollicking wordiness is a bit much-but few other individuals have brought their native country to the world's attention so effectively.

In John Steell's statue, Scott sits wrapped in his shepherd's plaid, a book on his knee, his faithful deerhound Maida casting up an enquiring glance at her master more than twice life size. The pose is unheroic but also suggestive of what some resent about the author: his love of the rustic squirearchy and promotion of a kind of 'tartan idyll'. Decorating the monument are 64 statuettes of characters from the novels and Scottish history. The most clearly visible are the four on the first gallery: Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Lady of the Lake, Meg Merriless and the Last Minstrel.

As an engineering feat alone, the monument was quite an achievement. Its architect was an unknown called George Meikle Kemp whose ambitious design, modelled on the author's beloved Melrose Abbey, was assured of stability by sinking a shaft 52ft down to the solid rock to support a structure just under four times that height. Kemp never saw his great project finished, unfortunately drowning in the Union Canal one dark night in 1844, just before its completion.

Along with some coins, newspapers, maps and medals in a glass jar, buried in the foundations is a bronze plaque declaring that Scott's writings 'were then allowed to have given more delight and suggested better feeling to a larger class of readers, in every rank of society, than those of any other author, with the exception of Shakespeare alone'.

There are 287 steps up to the highest gallery, for magnificent panoramic views over the city and out to sea (if you're hesitating over the climb, remember that you will get an equally spectacular view from the top of Calton Hill).

Walk east along Princes Street, past Jenners, the longest established department store in the world, on your left, and the Waverley Steps, notoriously the windiest place in the city in a southwesterly, on your right. Ahead on the right you will see the bloated clock tower of the Balmoral Hotel.

Once the North British Railway Hotel, it was built in 1902, a lumbering but undeniably impressive blot on the landscape, and now one of the smartest and most luxurious hotels in the city. Waverley Station, at its feet, has the unusual distinction of being the only station in Britain to be named after a novel; attempts by British Rail to rename it some ten years ago were successfully opposed.

Turn your back on the Balmoral and you will see the Register House ( open Mon-Fri 9-4.45), the grand domed building over the road spanning the approach from North Bridge.

This distinguished building is arguably the finest example in Britain of Robert Adam's neoclassical architecture. It was started to his design in 1774, but not completed until nearly 30 years later. Its significance at the time was threefold: it was the first public building in the New Town, designed to encourage further private investment there and provide an impressive welcome as you came off North Bridge; it was the first building in Edinburgh to be graced with a dome (partly hidden behind the pediment); and it was the first purpose-built repository for records in the western world. Since then it has been altered remarkably little, and is still the headquarters of the National Archives of Scotland. Visitors are welcome to explore the temporary exhibitions of historical material in the foyer and, if they ask nicely, to have a quick look at the splendid domed interior. If you want to use the reading rooms, you'll need to apply for a ticket (contact the National Archives of Scotland, HM General Register House, EH1 3YY, 0131 535 1314).

Carry on in the direction indicated by the Duke of Wellington astride his charger.

One of the city's more dramatic public monuments, the Wellington Statue was unveiled on the 37th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo (18 June 1852), during a terrible thunderstorm. The Duke admired Steell's portrayal of his riding style enough to have two copies made for his houses in England. Remarkably enough, the entire weight of the sculpture balances on the horse's hind legs and tail, all the more remarkable, as one contemporary observed, in that the horse has no hocks. Several moves to have the statue taken down because of its inappropriate political associations have so far been unsuccessful.

Continue straight on uphill, up Waterloo Place to the Regent Bridge.

With its triumphal arch depicting scenes from Waterloo, the Regent Bridge was engineered by Robert Stevenson, the grandfather of Robert Louis, to connect the New Town with the new Calton Jail. Enormously expensive, it ploughed right through part of the Old Calton Burial Ground.

Go through a door in the wall further up on the right to look around the Old Calton Burial Ground at the foot of Calton Hill.

Calton Hill

The Burial Ground makes a good introduction to the monuments of Calton Hill itself. Here, on a much smaller scale, you are surrounded by an even greater profusion of commemorative stonework.

You can't miss the most interesting monument, the Martyrs' Memorial, the prominent obelisk erected in 1844 by the Complete Suffrage Association. Abraham Lincoln casts a sympathetic eye on the memorial from over the way on the Emancipation Monument, commemorating the Scottish-American dead of the American Civil War. Next to it is Robert Adam's great, round Roman mausoleum for the great, round sceptical philosopher David Hume. On his burial in 1776, his friends kept vigil for eight nights by the gloomy tomb, some said to prevent the devil coming for his atheist soul, more likely to prevent medical students coming for his valuable corpse.

Other famous individuals whose graves can be found here include David Allan, the historical genre painter, and Thomas Hamilton, the architect of the Martyrs' Memorial, of the Royal High School (see below) and of much of the city's neoclassical appearance.

Continue up Waterloo Place as it turns into Regent Road as far as the rather depressing authoritarian bulk of St Andrew's House on the right hand side.

Standing on the site of old Calton Jail, St Andrew's House was modelled on the United Nations building in Geneva. It was opened as the new Scottish Office on the day Britain declared war in 1939 and still houses some of its departments.

Continue round the corner to take in the enormous expanse of Thomas Hamilton's Royal High School.

This much more pleasing building was very nearly the seat of Scotland's own parliament; the colonnaded facade of its stately old portico looks past Hamilton's monument to Robert Burns down to the much larger purpose-built parliament building under construction in Holyrood Road.

Hamilton's school building is the most complete contribution to the Greek Revival in Edinburgh. Work started on it in 1825 as the new home for the city's oldest school (since 1519), whose old pupils included Walter Scott and at least three future Lord Chancellors of England. In 1968 the school moved out to the genteel northwestern suburb of Barnton and is now one of the city's better state comprehensives. The building now stands empty as people debate various schemes which might best be housed in it.

The collection of buildings here on the hill explain why Edinburgh was given the title 'The Athens of the North'. The democratic pile of the school is something like the Temple of Theseus; the Burns monument opposite imitates the choragic monument to Lysicrates; up on the hill behind, the City Observatory is based on the Temple of the Winds, standing next to the final touch, a bit of the Parthenon itself in the shape of the unfinished National Monument (see below).

Branch off left into Regent Terrace.

This smart row of terraced houses, with private gardens sloping down to the right, is the home of foreign consulates and private art galleries. As it rounds the bend of the hill it turns into the elegant curve of Carlton Terrace (with an 'r'), named in the 19th century after the Prince Regent's London home, Carlton House, at the time of his visit to Edinburgh.

At the end of Carlton Terrace turn left into Royal Terrace.

This is the grandest and most spectacularly positioned residential street in the city. The simple form of Greenside Church, with its square steeple topped with four tall pyramids, beckons you from the end of the street.

Turn left at the end behind the church and climb the steep sloped steps to reach the top of Calton Hill for one of the finest views to be had of the city-with the Forth Road and Rail Bridges away in the distance.

The root of the name Calton (without the 'r') is less august than this prominent landmark deserves, being prosaically derived from the old Gallic word for a hill with scrubby bushes on top, where people used to hang out their washing to dry. The apparently random collection of monuments you now see competing for significance at the top of Calton Hill had been assembled by the end of the 19th century. Looking west towards the castle and Princes Street, the Gothic style of the battlemented Old Observatory House was designed to complement the Old Calton Jail down the hill. Built for the optician and astronomer Thomas Short between 1776 and 1792, it is, surprisingly enough, almost the only surviving work of James Craig, the planner of the New Town.

The next building to go up, in no uncertain terms, was the Nelson Monument (open April-Oct Mon 1-6, Tues-Sat 10-0; Oct-Mar Mon-Sat 10-3; adm), the 106ft signal tower erected in memory of Admiral Horatio Nelson after his death at Trafalgar in 1805. Every year on the anniversary, October 21, its flags still fly the signal 'England expects that every man will do his duty.' The foundation stone was laid two years later in great secrecy because the authorities feared a crowd of his admirers might fall off the cliff.

A climb to the top of the steep, narrow staircase is bracingly rewarding, and if the wind is strong, admiring the view over the low parapet can be quite hair raising. The 'time-ball' on the mast drops at 1pm every weekday, in conjunction with the One O'clock Gun fired from the castle. It was set up in 1852 for the benefit of skippers on the Firth of Forth and used to be linked to the castle by the longest telegraph wire in the world.

The rest of the buildings on the hill were nearly all designed by the tireless William Playfair. First came the domed City Observatory, next to the Old Observatory, built in 1818 to provide accurate time-readings. Inside is the two faced 'Politician's Clock'.

Another dome was added much later and is now home to the Edinburgh Experience (open April-June, Sept and Oct Mon-Fri 2-5, Sat and Sun 10.30-5; July and August daily 10.30-5; adm). Every half-hour this presents a surprisingly effective 3-D panoramic tour of the city and its surroundings in their different seasonal colours. At the southeast corner of the hill Playfair then placed the Doric Monument to his uncle John, the president of the Astronomical Institution that had awarded him the contract in the first place.

Astronomical is the only word to describe the cost of the next scheme proposed by Scott, Cockburn and Lord Elgin (the one with the Marbles) among others: a replica of the Parthenon to commemorate the fallen of the Napoleonic Wars. The National Monument was started in 1826 but ran out of funds three years later. Something of an embarrassment to the city (known as 'Edinburgh's Folly'), it inspired various early 20th-century schemes to complete it: as a National Gallery, as a celebration of 200 years of the Union, or even as part of yet another new parliament building. All came to nothing. Now the great blocks beneath its 12 Doric columns provide a very solid viewpoint, regularly mobbed at events like the Festival fireworks.

Playfair's finishing touch on Calton Hill was his spectacularly positioned circular monument to Dugald Stewart, the professor of moral philosophy, a more exact copy of the Lysicrates monument, put up only a year after Hamilton's one for Burns down below. If it looks familiar, it may be because television journalists seem fond of choosing it as the ideal backdrop for their reports on the latest hot developments from the Scottish political scene.

To get down to the bottom of the hill, take the path to the left of the monument, enjoying the fine view down Princes Street. Go down the steps to the left and, just before you get to the bottom, look out for the unusual memorial to Saint Wolodymyr the Great, Ruler of Ukraine, hidden in the ivy. Turn right on to Regent Road and walk back down Waterloo Place to the Register House.

Before the Battle of Waterloo had ever happened, the area in front of Register House was Shakespeare Square, famous for its Theatre Royal, where the most celebrated actress of the day, Sarah Siddons, appeared in 1784. Nothing daunted by her initial failure to draw the expected applause, she continued with her performance. In one of the silences that followed a voice was heard to murmur 'that's no' bad!', which provoked a thunderous ovation. Walter Scott's dramatised version of 'Rob Roy' was another highlight which saved the theatre's by then ailing fortunes, but it was a short reprieve.

In 1859 it was demolished to make way for the new General Post Office, the large Italianate building now standing empty on the North Bridge opposite the Balmoral. Prince Albert laid the foundation stone in 1861. 

Pass Register House on your right, heading west, and turn right into a narrow alley called West Register Street.

On the right is New Register House (for records of births, marriages and deaths), and the Court of the Lord Lyon, final arbiter on all matters heraldic and genealogical. On the left, the Guildford Arms is an excellent real ale pub with a late 19th-century ribbed ceiling, next door to the famous Café Royal with its long island bar, green leather benches and antique tiled walls depicting industrial pioneers.

If you are doing this walk during bank opening hours continue straight on, down a paved alley called Gabriel's Road (keeping New Register House on your right), turn left through a narrow gate and you will emerge into the front courtyard of the Royal Bank of Scotland in St Andrew Square. If the bank is closed, follow West Register Street round into St Andrew Square and tuft right until you are standing in front of the bank.

St Andrew Square

Little of the original character of the first square to be built in Craig's New Town remains, although the houses along the north side give a rough idea of what it all would have looked like. The rest of the square has been largely swallowed up in grandiose financial institutions. However, the exterior of the elegant Palladian country house which is now the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters would still just about be recognisable to its 18th-century owner, Sir Laurence Dundas, Commissary-General in the British Army. In 1774 he pipped the City council to the post by buying this site before they could build St Andrew's Church here (forcing the church to be built on George Street, see below). Inside, the building has been much altered, but it's worth going in to see the starry 19th-century dome in the telling room. The reckless Sir Laurence later lost the house one night in a bet, but, rather than move out, built his creditor another house in Drummond Place.

The 150ft column in the middle of the square dominates its surroundings as surely as the man on top held the reins of power in late 18th-century Scotland. This was Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, dubbed 'Harry IX, uncrowned King of Scotland' and described by Cockburn as 'the absolute dictator of Scotland'. He was Prime Minister William Pitt's right-hand man, keeping rigorous control over the voting of peers into Westminster, and wielding the kind of power that was only finally done away with by the 19th-century reform acts. The column, modelled on Trajan's in Rome, was put up in 1823, some two decades before Nelson's in London.

The six elongated figures on top of the Bank of Scotland, next door to its rival, represent Navigation, Commerce, Manufacture, Art, Science and Agriculture, the interests at the time of the British Linen Bank, who commissioned the building in 1846. Heading clockwise round the square, past another antique tiled bar called Tiles, you will find a plaque on the wall at No.21, in South St David Street, which marks the place where David Hume's new house once stood. One of the first to move into the New Town, the mild-mannered philosopher is supposed to have taken it in good part when the daughter of a judge graffitied his wall with 'St David'. He replied that many a worse man had been canonised, and the name has stuck for the street. It's ironic that this house was later where the first meetings of the Bible Society of Scotland were held.

Walk around St Andrew Square and continue west down George Street.

George Street

As you walk you will be keeping pace more or less with the order of the first New Town's development: the first cross-street, Hanover Street, was begun in 1784; the second, Frederick Street, in 1786; and the third, Castle Street, six Years later.

One of the joys of George Street is the changing panorama. Like a beacon at the far end of the street you can see the green dome of West Register House in Charlotte Square, which you will see up close near the end of this walk (see p. 146). Looking south, Hanover Street presents the extraordinary picture of the Royal Scottish Academy backed up by the Assembly Hall's twin towers and the spire of the Highland Tolbooth Kirk. To the north, the New Town slopes down to the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife beyond, a view enhanced at Frederick Street by Playfair's church of St Stephen.

Once the city's financial centre, George Street is now steadily being turned into its most lively upmarket street. All along the street, expensive new bars and restaurants jostle for position with some of the city's most illustrious shops, and some of its grand bank buildings have become spectacular, echoing drinking halls, the largest and most extraordinary of which is the Dome, standing on the site of the old Physician's Hall, its magnificent interior hidden behind a grand columned portico.

As you walk, look up above the shopfronts, where, unlike Princes Street, the street's Georgian origins are intact. Over the first building on the right hand side, the Standard Life Assurance building, the original pediment (1839) includes Steell's sculpture of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Next door is another more modern interpretation of the parable in bronze relief.

A little way along George Street, on the right, is the elegant oval of St Andrew's and St George's Church.

The church was forced to make do with this constricted site after being displaced from St Andrew Square (see above). The New Town's first parish church, its shape is reminiscent of Bernini's St Andrew's in Rome's Quirinale. The elliptical sweep of the interior is certainly beautifully proportioned, and contains modern stained glass and the original boxed pews.

The church is most famous for being the scene of the Disruption in 1843, when Thomas Chalmers (whose statue stands at the crossroads of Castle and George Streets) led 407 ministers out of the Church of Scotland's annual assembly to set up the Free Church-free from the interference of patronage and the Civil Courts. When the two churches reunited again in 1929, they met here for the first time. In 1964 St Andrew's amalgamated with St George's in Charlotte Square, when the latter was converted into West Register House.

Pause by the statue of King George IV and look left up Hanover Street.

You are roughly on a level with Steell's enormous 25-ton statue of Queen Victoria dressed up as Britannia, sitting on top of the Royal Scottish Academy on Princes Street. It's rather grubby now, and is almost camouflaged against the equally blackened stone of the Assembly Hall on the hill behind. The National Gallery of Scotland is tucked away between the two.

Continue along George Street, westwards.

The fine wine merchant Justerini and Brooks, on the right at No.45, stands on the former premises of Blackwood's Magazine, which counted George Eliot among its contributors. The English essayist Sydney Smith, one of the editors of the first number of the Edinburgh Review, stayed next door at No.46. He described Edinburgh as a place of 'odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts and most enlightened and cultivated understandings'.

Opposite are the Assembly Rooms, opened for magnificent society gatherings at the end of the 18th century, and still serving much the same purpose today, albeit with considerably less formality. Its pompous portico by William Burn was a later addition to John Henderson's austere essay in continental classicism.

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.

This was one of the first houses on the street, designed in 1771 by Robert Adam for the English judge Baron Orde and his society daughters (one of whom was known to have teased David Hume; another readily agreed to be the second wife of the fearsome hanging judge, Lord Braxfield). Their house is now part of the Royal College of Physicians, designed in neoclassical style by Thomas Hamilton on its move down from George Street in 1844. The grand portico at Nos.9 and 10, with its three health-related statues of Hygeia flanked by Aesculapius and Hippocrates, stands out solidly from the rest of the street. Anyone with an interest in matters medical is welcome to visit the library, but more general tours of the quite spectacular interior are only provided for groups by arrangement (call (0131)2257324).

Beyond the college at No.4 are the headquarters of BBC Scotland, on the site of the Philosophical Institution which was founded in 1848 with Thomas Carlyle as its first president.

Pause at the end of Queen Street to admire the extraordinary edifice that is the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Open daily 10:00 to 17:00, late night Thursdays open until 19:00

The red Dumfriesshire sandstone and Gothic revivalist style of the National Portrait Gallery is in striking contrast to the Craigleith stone and classical proportions of Queen Street. It was also deliberately designed to be different from Playfair's classical galleries on the Mound.

The idea of a national collection of portraits grew out of a specifically 19th century British Imperial notion of education by example, and it's not such a bad one for all that. Scotland's was the second of only four in the world, the others being in London and Dublin and, since 1962, in Washington.

Founded in 1882, it was the dreamchild and gift to the city of John Ritchie Findlay, proprietor of The Scotsman newspaper and a committed philanthropist. The building was designed by Robert Rowand Anderson and completed in 1890. Inspired by the Doge's Palace in Venice, Anderson also incorporated an impressive array of sandstone historical figures into his design. Unfortunately they're not labelled.

Walking round the outside of the building, it's entertaining trying to decipher who's who.

As you approach the gallery, walking east along Queen Street, the first group of historical statues at the northwestern corner consists of a sailor, a soldier, a philosopher and a political economist: Adam Duncan of Camperdown, Sir Ralph Abercromby, David Hume and Adam Smith respectively. On the front facade, John Knox stands steadfast in the fourth niche along. Next to him towards the entrance is the Good Sir James Douglas, standing above and to the right of Robert the Bruce, whose heart he took with him in a box on the Crusades. High up on a pinnacle above the main entrance is History, while below her, Scotland sits crowned in the central arch behind, she in turn supported by Industry and Religion.

Under the front windows there are three panels, with Fine Arts in between the Ruder Arts (craftsmen of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages), and the Sciences (Medicine, Astronomy and Navigation). The Fine Arts panel is interesting because, as with the sculptures generally, great attention has been paid to figurative accuracy. Strangely the Arts are represented by artists of international acclaim: Painting, in a monk's habit, looks like Fra Angelico; Poetry seems to be Dante; and on the right, Sculpture itself is a likeness of the early 19th century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

Beneath them, in the spandrels of the front entrance's arch, are War and Peace, and all are guarded by Malcolm III Canmore and his wife Queen Margaret, standing above Sir William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce. Continuing past the main entrance, James VI and I stands next to Malcolm III, followed by earlier Scottish kings. On the corner of Queen Street and North St Andrew Street stand James Hutton, the geologist, the surgeon John Hunter, artist Sir Henry Raeburn, the 17th-century lawyer James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount Stair, who wrote the 'Institutions of the Law in Scotland', and John Napier, the 16th-century inventor of logarithms.

Round the corner, in the middle of the eastern wall on North St Andrew Street, is Mary, Queen of Scots supported by her defenders John Lesley and William Maitland. At the top corner nearest St Andrew Square are four poets from the 14th-16th centuries: John Barbour, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas and Sir David Lindsay. En masse the statues introduce the formidable processional frieze in the Gallery's Central Hall, where they all appear again, contributing to an even more expansive Victorian celebration of great Scots, which even includes Edward I of England, three Vikings and a Druid.

There's a good Café in the gallery, if you're in need of a sit down. To continue turn left off Queen Street down Dublin Street, heading for the more imposing proportions of the second New Town.

On the left is Abercromby Place, named after General Sir Ralph Abercromby who gave up his blanket to a cold soldier as he lay dying himself at Aboukir Bay in the Napoleonic Wars. It was the first curved street in town and its construction drew astonished crowds. No.17 was home to architect William Henry Playfair, and is now an upmarked guesthouse (see p.233). At No.3 a plaque commemorates Mary Stopes, pioneer of birth control.

Carry on down Dublin Street and turn left into Drummond Place.

Named after the Lord Provost George Drummond, who proposed the building of the New Town, Drummond Place was the second phase's equivalent to St Andrew Square and it too has its share of distinguished former residents. No.38 was home to Adam Black, another Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who bought the rights to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1827, and is commemorated with a huge statue in Princes Street Gardens. Sir Robert Lorimer, architect of the National War Memorial and the Thistle Chapel in St Giles, altered No.4 for his brother John Henry Lorimer, introducing curves to the panelled front door, and a scroll above it. As a plaque records, this was also the home of the painter, Sir William McTaggart, grandson of the other painter McTaggart. Nos.31 and 32 were the home of Sir Compton 'Whisky Galore' Mackenzie until 1972, and only just managed to accommodate his library of 12,000 books.

Turn left out of Drummond Place down Great King Street.

The parallel of George Street, and also named, with hindsight rather ironically, after mad George 111, Great King Street was completed around 1820. It consists of four palace-fronted blocks divided in the middle by Dundas Street. J. M. Barrie lodged at No.3 as a struggling young journalist. Earlier in the century Thomas 'Opium Eater' de Quincey stayed in the brand new block at No.9 for four years.

Turn right at the comer of Great King Street and Dundas Street.

This corner is where the last sedan chair in Edinburgh was available for hire until 1870. Half a century earlier the city's streets were home to 101 of these single-seater, two-man-powered weatherproof boxes for the well-to-do. Rickshaws, pulled by English-speaking rugby players, have emerged as their equally labour-intensive, environmentally friendly late 20th-century replacement.

Take the next left off Dundas Street into Cumbertand Street.

This low, tenemented street demonstrates the preservation of social distinctions in the New Town's architecture: cheaper apartments meant that the servant class could afford to live in the New Town, behind the grand boulevards.

Emerging at the other end, you are confronted by the massive facade of St Stephen's Church.

Described rather cruelly by one academic of the time as 'a mouth without cheeks', the church is a remarkable New Town landmark. Originally it was intended that it should stand in Royal Circus at the end of Great King Street, but, like St Andrew's before it, it ended up being allocated a much smaller and more problematic site.

Step forward William Playfair, who rose to the challenge by building an unusual square church at a diagonal to the corner, with a baroque tower and yawning entrance monumental enough to draw the eye from distant George Street up the hill The pendulum for its clock is supposedly the longest in Europe. The church's cavernous but plain interior, always too large for its congregation, was divided in two in the 1950s with a floor at the level of its gallery. Quite recently it closed down altogether and has been re-opened as a community centre.

Over the road, the late 19th-century St Vincent's Episcopal Church is tiny by comparison. This is still a place of worship, and has connections with the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem.

Bear right between the two churches and head down St Stephen Street.

Rounding the corner, you leave the New Town proper and approach Stockbridge (see Walk IV). St Stephen Street has a collection of wacky clothes and antique shops with two-tiered frontages. The left-hand side, with steps going both up and down to the small shops, restaurants and bars, is an extended example of an architectural arrangement once common in Edinburgh. In the 1970s, the street was at the forefront of Stockbridge's transformation into a trendy area for artists, students and then yuppies. Further along on the right, set back from the street, is the Georgian arched gateway to Stockbridge Market, announcing the availability of 'Butcher Meat, Fruits, Fish and Poultry'.

At the end of the street, turn left, cross North West Circus Place and climb the zigzag steps tucked away behind the tiny Stockbridge Post Office, which will briny you suddenly back into New Town surroundings in India Street.

No. 14, about halfway up on the right, was where the remarkable James Clerk Maxwell was born in 1831. Brought up at the family estate of Glenlair in Galloway, he attended the Edinburgh Academy, where he was nicknamed 'Daffy' because of his stammer and strong regional accent. At the age of 15 he presented his first paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in George Street, the start of a career in science which was to see him take up the first ever professorship of experimental physics at Cambridge in 1871. There he developed his revolutionary ideas on electromagnetic radiation, his 'Maxwell equations', which laid the foundations of subsequent theories of electronics. He died eight years later, but his work was important enough for him to be hailed the 'father of modern science', and for his contribution to be ranked with the discoveries of Newton and Einstein. His house is now the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

On the left, in Jamaica Street West, Kay's Bar is a cosy pub housed in the last surviving early 19th-century house in the street.

At the top of India Street, turn left to see where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, at No. 17 Heriot Row. There's a plaque, and a weathered information board on the gardens opposite. Then retrace your steps and turn right into the quiet rotund regularity of Moray Place.

The last and most impressive of the New Town developments, Moray Place, Ainslie Place and Randolph Crescent were built by the Earl of Moray between 1822 and 1855 with the benefit of lessons learned from the first two developments: less uniformity, fewer straight lines, and even stricter instructions on admissible designs. Moray Place was the glorious centrepiece: a huge 12-sided Roman Doric circus. Enough of its original appearance, right down to the cobbles and paving stones, has survived for it to be a favourite film location, standing in as a generic 'grand address' in any great Western European city during the early 19th century.

The Earl of Moray ensconced himself firmly at No.28. Surprisingly enough, religious reformer Thomas Chalmers lived at No.3 from 1831 to 1835. Some of the houses are now smart offices; those that aren't probably belong to millionaire lawyers. On the north side, spectacular private gardens visible from Doune Terrace slope down to the Water of Leith.

Head up Great Stuart Street to Ainslie Place.

Here it's easy to appreciate the grandeur of the architect Gillespie Graham's conception, as he set about rivalling Playfair's Royal Terrace on Calton Hill. William Blackwood lived at No.3 from 1830 to 1834; Dugald Stewart died at No.5 in 1828; and Sir Charles Bell, discoverer of the sensory and motor nerves of the brain, lived at No.6.

Carry on up Great Stuart Street, which continues after Ainslie Place, to Randolph Crescent.

At No. 13, on the right, is the French Institute, with an interesting gallery and, as you might expect, a very good Café and restaurant.

If you want to escape from city grit and unyielding pavements, you can join the leafy riverside of Walk IV here by turning right on to Queensferry Street, towards the Dean Bridge, and then left down Bell's Brae. Otherwise turn left on to Queensferry Street, and walk along it to look down Melville Street, to the right, with a fine view of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral.

The Gothic mass of the cathedral, built between 1874 and 1917, contrasts dramatically with Melville Street's classical lines. The architect George Gilbert Scott provided the designs, and he is said to have considered it one of his finest works. It undeniably possesses a solemn dignity. The stone buttresses outside, supporting the 270ft main spire, can also be seen on the inside of the church. The twin spires of the cathedral, known as Barbara and Mary after the Walker sisters who left enough money for the great church to be completed, completely upstage the statue of Robert Dundas, son of the mighty Henry, half way down the street.

Turn left from Queensferry Street into Randolph Place and walk down either of the narrow alleys beside West Register House, around to the front entrance on Charlotte Square.

Charlotte Square

The finest part of the first New Town has been saved until the end of the walk: Charlotte Square is a masterpiece of Georgian design. Its architect, Robert Adam, never got to see the finished effect, but it is his work on the north and south sides of the square that is responsible for its unity and poise.

On the west side, St George's Church, designed by Robert Reid to Adam's instructions, became West Register House in the 1960s. Its distinctive green dome is modelled on St Paul's in London, and it is topped with an illustration of the natural order: a gilded cross on top of the earth on top of the imperial crown.

Just as with the other fine squares in the New Town, over the years a significant number of Edinburgh worthies have lived here: William Fettes, the grocer who became director of the British Linen Bank and founder of the city's most famous school, died in No.13. Lord Cockburn lived at No.14, and used to listen to the corncrakes on what is now the Moray Estate. Earl Haig, the British commander in the First World War, was born at No.24. From 1959 to 1999, No.6 was the Edinburgh residence of the Secretary of State for Scotland; from 1999 it will be the official residence of Scotland's First Minister.

The most interesting house in the square is undoubtedly No.7, the Georgian House (open April-Oct Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 2-5; last admission 4.30; adm). In 1975, after careful restoration by David Learmont, it was opened by the National Trust for Scotland as a showcase Georgian residence of the period

1790 to 1810, the New Town partner to Gladstone's Land on the Royal Mile (see Walk I).

A volunteer guide is on hand in each of the five main rooms (the Bedchamber, surprisingly enough on the ground floor, the Kitchen in the basement, the Drawing Room, Dining Room and Parlour) to answer any questions that the arrangements might provoke. The furniture is of particular interest, being distinctively Scottish, with the best examples in the Dining Room and Parlour.

One of the few original features of the house is the stone-compartmented wine cellar in the basement. It's worth looking at this first and then watching the 20 minute video reconstruction of a day-in-the-life of the house. Another short film on New Town architecture also sets the house in its context. The immaculately clean kitchen is one of the most popular rooms, with its boiling range, rotating roasting spit (powered by the heat of the fire) and baking range. Here the food would have been prepared for the informal but gigantic suppers that were such a distinctive feature of the Scottish enlightenment, and so very different from prim ; Victorian dinner parties.

Leave Charlotte Square at its southwest comer, fuming into Hope Street and down to the West End (off Princes Street). Cross over towards the Caledonian Hotel and walk a short way down Lothian Road.

On the corner of Lothian Road and Princes Street are two churches, St John's and St Cuthbert's, both worth a look around if they're open. St John's is Episcopalian, and it's the older of the two buildings, designed by William Burn in 1816.

At the first turning on the left after St Cuthbert's, on the corner of King's Stables Road, is a round tower put up to protect the West Churchyard from grave robbers. The churchyard contains the graves of many notable people: Dr Jamieson of the Dictionary, George Meikle Kemp, architect of the Scott Monument, Thomas De Quincey, and John Napier, cursed by many a schoolchild as the inventor of logarithms. In the corner, just under the Castle Rock, there is a tombstone to someone called 'Jekyll', which is supposedly where Robert Louis Stevenson got the name for Hyde's alter ego.

This is the end of the walk if you'd like to stop for a drink, try the excellent vegetarian Café beneath St John's, or if the weather is fine continue through the churchyard into Princes Street Gardens where there is an open-air Café next to the children's playground.