Exploring Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

To walk down The Royal Mile it is to walk through history. Extending between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood it consists of the adjoining streets: the Espalande, Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, Netherbow, Canongate and Abbey Strand.

At the top, historic Edinburgh Castle sits on its lofty perch – an extinct volcano. It contains the tiny 12th-century St Margaret's Chapel, the huge 15th-century cannon, Mons Meg and the Great Hall erected in 1510; also the Scottish Crown Jewels, the Stone of Destiny, and the National War Museum of Scotland. Its esplanade hosts the famous Military Tattoo in August each year.

On the right side of Castlehill is the Tartan Weaving Mill and Exhibition. It demonstrates the making of Scotland’s national dress. Scottish Whisky 'the water of life' is similarly covered at the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre further down. For a camera eye view of the area visit the Camera Obscura & World of Illusions across the street - covered in a separate entry.

On the right of the Lawnmarket is Riddle’s Court a 16th-century house built by John McMorran the richest merchant in Edinburgh. The ‘Beam Room’ has an extraordinary original painted ceiling and the house contains a fine example of 17th century plasterwork.

On the left of the Lawnmarket is the 17th-century Lady Stair's House containing The Writers' Museum. It covers the lives and work of Scotland's great literary figures, in particular Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Passing Parliament House in the High Street (covered separately) St Giles Cathedral dominates the area. Its 900 years of history is also covered by a separate entry.

Across the street beneath the City Chambers is one of Edinburgh's unique attractions - Mary King's Close. Entered through Warriston's Close is a warren of hidden streets where people lived, worked and died between the 17th and the 19th centuries. You can walk through these underground closes and witness dramatic episodes and spectres from the past.

Further down the on the left stands John Knox House. This 16th-century house, the home of the fiery Presbyterian reformer now houses a museum covering his life. Across the road is the Museum of Childhood crammed full of objects telling of childhood, past and present.

On the right of last major section of the Royal Mile, the Canongate, is The People's Story Museum. Housed in the late 16th-century Canongate Tolbooth, it tells the story of the lives, work and leisure of local people from the late 18th century. Across the road the Museum of Edinburgh covers the history of the city.

On the right just before the bottom of the Royal Mile is the new Scottish Parliament – discussed separately. Straight ahead stands the Palace of Holyrood dating from the early 1500s. Successive kings and queens have made the palace their premier royal address in Scotland including Mary, Queen of Scots who lived here between 1561 and 1567. It remains the Queen's official home in Scotland.

That completes one ‘Royal’ historic mile.

The Camera Obscura on the Royal Mile near Edinburgh Castle sits high above Edinburgh in an Outlook Tower originally forming part of Short's Observatory - a 17th century building.

Paying at the ticket counter I slogged up six flights of stairs, browsing historic photographs of Edinburgh in the stairwell as I ascended. At the top an observation deck gave 360° panoramas of Edinburgh - the view took my breath away. Even better free telescopes including a high-power Navy telescope, offered close-up views of the city and beyond.

At the scheduled time my accumulated group filed into the Camera Obscura and the show began. The 150-year-old periscope-like lens threw an image of nearby streets and buildings onto a curved, white-painted table in the projection room. Luckily it was a bright, sunny day so we had a fabulously sharp 360-degree view. We could see what was happening on the Castle esplanade, in Princes Street, and the wider surrounding area. The guide helped to identify landmarks and discussed highlights of Edinburgh's history.

In explaining how the camera worked she was very entertaining. She showed how images can be magnified or people almost magically picked up off the street with just a bit of cardboard. Using the same trick traffic was made to cross cardboard bridges.

After the show we made our way down to the next floor were we found hundreds of early photos of the surrounding areas and on the floors below optical illusions, distorting mirrors, lasers and 'take a picture of your own shadow'.

There is a Magic Gallery where you can catch your shadow, shake hands with your ghost and discover a new you in the morphing machine. You can step inside a giant pinhole camera, which gives an upside down image. There are giant kaleidoscopes, the world's biggest plasma dome, and giant lenses, which let you see your friends in a whole new light! There are several exhibits in the "World of Illusions" with an optical theme that keep children occupied. An image projected onto the floor gives the impression of water ripples if you stepped on it.

The Light Fantastic is a stunning hologram display and the U.K.'s only permanent gallery dedicated to the science and art of holography. I watched entranced as eerily realistic 3D pictures changed, appeared and disappeared before my eyes! Some were huge, one of the biggest was of a tarantula - children were daring each other to touch one of its legs.

Edinburgh Vision is fascinating for those that love history. It shows Edinburgh in 3D from the 1850s to the present day. Live city viewcams also allows you to scan around the city and zoom in and out on anything that takes your fancy!

All in all a very enjoyable afternoon, highly recommended to anyone visiting Edinburgh. Many people come back to this attraction time and time again.

Admission: Adult £7.50; Senior Citizen / Student £6.00; Child (5-15yrs) £5.00; Under 5yrs Free and it is open daily.

Partially hidden by the bulk of St. Giles Cathedral lies Parliament Hall, an important part of Scotland’s history. It was the seat of Scottish government from 1639 until 1707 when the governments of Scotland and England were united. The centre of power then moved to Westminster in London - 104 years after the union of the two crowns.

The 123 feet long hall is decorated with a beautiful Neo-gothic hammer beam roof and a series of Raeburn portraits. A striking feature is the Great Window in the south wall celebrates the founding of the Court of Session in 1532. It contains 8,000 pieces of painted and stained glass covering 390 square feet.

Imagine the scene when Parliament opened here on 31 August 1639. Burgesses, followed by the commissioners of the shires and nobility, led the ‘riding’ of Parliament from the Palace of Holyrood at the foot of the High Street. Next came the regalia of Scotland followed by trumpeters, heralds, the Kings Commissioner and his entourage. At Parliament the Earl Marischal escorted the Commissioner to the throne.

Given Scotland's stormy history it is no surprise that parliament was often at odds with the monarchy. In a time when Scottish Kings and Queens had a far more antagonistic relationship with their nobles than those in England - resulting in several royal murders - it is little surprise that parliament was often reluctant to approve taxation or sanction war.

For 300 years from 1707 Scotland was governed from Westminster in London by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scotland though retained its educational and legal system, which left the door open for the process to be reversed. It is a matter of debate why such an ancient institution should vote itself out of existence, but it seems certain that economic problems coupled with increasing divisions in the parliament and underhanded misdeeds such as bribery all meant that the end of the legislative body was a formality by the time Scotland’s parliament came to accept the union with England. For many Scots the whole matter was summed up in Robert Burns' famous poem ‘A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation’.

Parliament Hall and the adjoining rooms are now used by Scotland's highest court. The Seal Library is also situated here and its Upper Library designed by William Stark is regarded as an architectural masterpiece. One of the statues in the room represents Sir Walter Scott who was the senior court official from 1806 to 1830.

A rise in nationalism in Scotland during the late 1960s fuelled demands for home rule. The discovery of oil off Scotland’s coast led to arguments that more of the oil revenues should come to Scotland and the move to devolution strengthened. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, demands for a Scottish Parliament grew. Finally on 1 July 1999 elements of power were transferred from Westminster to a devolved new Parliament now housed in a purpose built building at the foot of the Royal Mile.

In 2004, after a gap of 297 years during which the British Parliament governed Scotland, Scotland had once again its own parliament. It is now housed at the foot of the Royal Mile close to the Queen's official residence in Scotland, the Palace of Holyrood.

Strangely a Catalan architect, Enric Miralles, designed the building - he died before its completion. He aimed to produce a poetic union between the Scottish landscape, its people, its culture and the city of Edinburgh. This approach won the parliament building many awards and the description "a tour de force of arts and crafts and quality without parallel in the last 100 years of British architecture".

The result is a collection of low-lying buildings intended to blend in with the surrounding rugged scenery and existing buildings. They have many features connected to nature and land, such as the leaf shaped motifs of the roof in the Garden Lobby of the building. The most distinctive characterisation is the roof of the Tower Buildings - reminiscent of upturned boats on the shoreline. Inside the buildings the use of Scottish rock such as gneiss and granite in the flooring and walls and oak and sycamore in the furniture reinforces the connection to the land.

The debating chamber contains an elliptical horseshoe of seating for the Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), with the governing party or parties sitting in the middle of the semicircle and opposition parties on either side. The layout blurs political divisions and hopefully encourages consensus among MSPs. There are 131 desks and chairs on the floor of the chamber for the elected members and other members of the Government. The desks have a lectern, a microphone and in-built speakers as well as electronic voting equipment. Galleries above the main floor hold 255 members of the public, 18 guests and 34 members of the press.

The most notable feature of the chamber is the roof. Laminated oak beams joined with 112 stainless steel connectors suspended on steel rods support the roof. It enables the debating chamber to span over 30 metres (100 ft) without any supporting columns. In entering the chamber, MSPs pass under a stone lintel, the Arniston Stone, once part of the pre-1707 Parliament building. It symbolises the connection between the historical Parliament and the present-day Parliament. Natural light diffuses by glass fins, which run down from light spaces in the ceiling, enters the chamber.

There is a wide variety of artwork and sculptures in the Scottish Parliament ranging from commissioned pieces to official gifts from overseas parliamentary delegations.
The Main Hall of the Parliament contains a sculpture modelled on the Scottish crown, sceptre and the sword of the state. The parliamentary mace of silver and inlaid with gold panned from Scottish rivers is displayed in a glass case in the debating chamber. It has a formal, ceremonial role during meetings of the Parliament.

Despite its many awards many Scots consider the building a shambles – visit and decide!

A prominent feature of the Edinburgh skyline, St. Giles' Cathedral with its distinctive hollow-crown tower decorates the Royal Mile between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood. St. Giles himself was the patron saint of cripples and lepers, which gives a clue to the antiquity of the church. It has been one of Edinburgh's religious focal points for over 900 years. The oldest parts of the building are four massive central pillars, dating from 1120. Over the years chapels added while enlarging the church has left it irregular in plan. At one time there were fifty altars.

Today it is the mother church of Presbyterianism and is the historic City Church of Edinburgh. It has uniquely reflected the life and religion of Scotland. On the signing in 1707 of the Treaty of Union to merge the Parliament of Scotland with the Parliament of England, the carilloner in St Giles rang the bells to the tune ‘Why should I be so sad on my wedding day?’

It was at this church that John Knox, Scotland's equivalent to Martin Luther, preached his sermons on the Reformation in the time of Mary Queen of Scots whose Catholic faith was in opposition to Knox's beliefs. Over the doorway on the way out, there is an angel playing the bagpipes on the right side of the Statue of John Knox.

Inside gilded and ornately carved memorials honour heroes of past conflicts. Notable monuments include those to James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612-50), his enemy Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll (1607-61) and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94). The back steps of this ornate church has seen many a man swing from the gallows. The back parking lot is directly over an ancient, and packed burial ground. Plaques embedded in parking spots mark a couple of the more famous bodies that lie beneath the asphalt.

The exquisite little Thistle Chapel is the chapel of The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Scotland's leading Order of Chivalry. Its magnificent carvings and stonework evoke the origins of the Order and amaze with the wealth of details associated with Scotland. It carved and painted fittings have extraordinary detail. The Order founded by James VII in 1687, consists of the monarch and 16 knights. The knights are the personal appointment of the crown, and are normally Scots who have made a significant contribution to national or international affairs. The Chapel honours some of the greatest Scots of the last 300 years.

The stained glass windows form a continuous story over seven windows. One of the last windows depicts St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, holding his cross. On either side of him are St. Columba and King David. Below are St. Giles and St. Cuthbert.

The magnificent organ is one of the newest and finest in Europe. It forms part of a tradition of fine music in St Giles' that dates from the middle ages.