The Royal Mile

rechristened The Hub and converted into the administrative headquarters of the Edinburgh International Festival. This richly decorated neo-Gothic marvel was designed in 1839 by James Gillespie Graham and Augustus

Pugin, the man who gave the Houses of Parliament in London their distinctive look. With its skybound steeple and spire, the tallest in the city (240ft), it was built on the site of the Victoria Hall, the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland at the time of the Disruption.

There's a Café and restaurant run by the same people as the Atrium and Blue at the Traverse Theatre, and a general purpose hall for visiting artists to strut their stuff.

Continue down the Royal Mile, past the back entrance to the Church of Scotland's Assembly Hall and the Ensign Ewart pub, to reach the Lawnmarket.

In the Middle Ages this widening of the way was ordained as the place where all cloth (or ilawn') was to be sold. Also on sale were 'butter, cheise, wool and sichlike gudis'. The activity greeting visitors as they emerged from the West Bow and the Grassmarket must have been bewildering. The market was only finally cleared away at the end of the 19th century.

At the top of the Lawnmarket, on the left hand side, is the entry to Mylne's Court.

Now one of the most attractive halls of residence for students at the university, this was once one of the smartest addresses on the Royal Mile. It was designed at the end of the 17th century by the mason who had a hand in Charles lI's extension to Holyrood Palace and it reflected the superior tastes of the well-to-do at the time, and can reasonably claim to be the city's first proper square. It was the subject of award-winning sympathetic restoration in the 1960s, right down to the thick glass in the half-timbered windows.

Cross the road again, and on your right is Riddle's Court.

Riddle's Court gives a fair idea of what many of these courts looked like in the 18th century: note the doorway with 1726 inscribed upon it. This is where David Hume bought his first house in 1753 and where he started his History of Great Britain, his readable exercise in debunking a few contentious issues in church history. Deeper within this court you are heading further back in time, to the home of a wealthy 16th-century burgess called John McMorran, who hosted lavish banquets here for King James Vl and his Queen. He met an unexpected end: on 15 September 1595, he went with a group of officers to break up a sit-in by the sons of the gentry at the Royal High School, then situated in the Canongate, who were demanding a holiday. As he approached, they shot him in the head. The protest came to a shocked and abrupt conclusion, but by James Vl's royal command the culprit was never brought to justice, probably because his father happened to be the Chancellor of Caithness.

Return to the Lawnmarket and you are opposite Gladstone's Land (31 March to 30 Jun, daily 10-5; 1 Jul to 31 Aug, daily 10-7; 1 Sep to 31 Oct, daily 10-5).