A closer look at Edinburgh, occasionally viewed from the top of a double-decker bus. The road design often doesn’t make any sense, or follow any kind of grid, facts that belie it’s medieval history. Some streets are especially wide, so that horse carriages could make a full turn in them. Keeping these old traditions may add to the character of the city, but I question whether it’s worth the added confusion and frustration when trying to navigate.
One of the interesting things about this city is that it can be divided down the middle into distinct Old Town and New Town sections, where the difference in architectural style is very striking.
There’s a bagpipe busker on this corner outside the Princes Mall at all times. I think a few of them share shifts; it must be the most lucrative corner in the city.
Calton Hill. The obelisk is the Political Martyrs’ Monument in the Old Calton Cemetery, and the circular tower that stands tallest is Nelson’s Monument, which has a giant 1500-lb ball on top that’s raised and dropped at precisely 1pm every day to allow ships to synchronize their chronometers.
It’s interesting to see railroad tracks going straight through the heart of a major city.
The Last Drop Tavern is located directly next to the city gallows, where people would come to watch public executions.
There are many alleys with the suffix “Close”, and it’s said that they got this name due to the fact that people were trapped inside and left to die as the only means of quarantine and control of the bubonic plague. This one is particularly narrow.
One thing I’m really not used to are the changes in elevation through the city, where flats and pubs are built on steep hills.
Jenners Department Store was once the oldest independent store in Scotland, maintaining it’s position on this street since 1838. There are beautiful carvings of women as pillars on the façade, used to show that women are the support of the house.
North Bridge, leading from New Edinburgh to Old Edinburgh, with the Balmoral Hotel the most prominent part of the skyline.
The Scott Monument in the Princes Street Gardens. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a more impressive monument to a writer.
I can’t believe the “closes” were basically alleyways.… awful.
And thank you for the Scott monument, it sent me off after all the background on him.
you’re incorrect about why closes are named such, close is an old word for a narrow street.
The ‘closes’ were in fact originally enclosures, i.e. gardens, behind the narrow houses lining the High St of the Old Town. Since space was very limited on the steep slopes either side of the High Street, buildings expanded onto these ‘closes’, leaving only the narrow passageways down the side of some of them to allow access to the rear. ‘Close’ has now come to refer to these narrow alleys. They were never intended for imprisoning plague sufferers, as the whole point of the close was to provide access round the back of the building. I have never heard of a close being used this way.
Hi! Just wondering which the 5th picture from the bottom was taken? It’s so gorgeous!