The Royal Mile is one of Europe’s most interesting historic walks. We did this walk as an orientation on our arrival into Edinburgh before and after dinner. The main sights we visited during subsequent days – we’ll cover the sights in more detail in their own posts.
The Royal Mile starts at where it all began in Edinburgh – at Edinburgh Castle on top of the hill. We’ll give the Castle a visit later in our travels. It’s all downhill from there to the Palace of Holyrood house. The street itself changes names – Castlehill, Lawnmarket, High Street, and Canongate – but it’s a straight, downhill shot totaling just over a mile.
Nearly every step is packed with shops, cafe’s and lanes leading to tiny squares.
Celtic tribes (and maybe the Romans) once occupied the top of this hill. As the town grew, it spilled downhill along the sloping ridge that became the Royal Mile. Because this strip of land is so narrow, there was no place to build but up. So in medieval times, it was densely packed with multi-story “tenements” – large edifices under one roof that houses a number of tenants.
Walking downhill traces the growth of the city – its birth atop Castle Hill, its Old Town heyday in the 1600s, it expansion in the 1700s into the Georgian New Town (leaving the old quarter an overcrowded, disease-ridden Victorian slum), and on to the 21st century at the modern Scottish parliament building (2004).
Most of the Royal Mile feels like one long Scottish shopping mall, selling all manner of kitschy souvenirs. but the streets are also packed with history, and if you push past the postcard racks into one of the many side alleys, you can still find a few surviving rough edges of the old city.
Be sure to look up – the spires, carvings, and towering Gothic “skyscapers” give this city its unique urban identity.
More good news… plenty of pubs t whet your whistle. 🙂
During the Royal Mile’s heyday, in the 1600s, the Lawnmarket intersection was bigger and served as a market for fabric (especially “lawn”, a linen-like cloth). The market would fill this space with hustle, bustle, and lots of commerce.
Branching off the spine of the Royal Mile are a number of narrow alleyways that go by various local names. A “wynd” (rhymes with “kind”) is a narrow, winding lane. A “pend” is an arched gateway. “Gate” is from an Old Norse word for street. And a “close” is a tiny alley between two buildings (originally with a door that “closed” at night). A “close” usually leads to a “court,”, or courtyard. We ducked down an close to take a peek at the Writer’s Museum. If you are a fan of Scotland’s holy trinity of writers (Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott), and Robert Louis Stevenson), be sure you give it a peek.
Moving downhill, we find the seated green statue of hometown boy David Hume – one of the most influential thinkers not only of Scotland, but in all of Western philosophy. The atheistic Hume was one of the towering figures of the Scottish Enlightenment of the mid-1700s. Thinkers and scientists were using the experimental method to challenge and investigate everything, including religion. Hume questioned cause and effect in thoughts puzzles such as this: We can see that when one billiard ball strikes another, the second one moves, but how do we know the collision “caused” the movement? Notice his shiny toe? People on their way to trial (in the high court just behind the statue) or students on their way to exams rub it for good luck. Jackie thought she could use all the luck she could get. 🙂
St. Giles Cathedral is the flagship of the Church of Scotland, and will get it’s own post.
The reformer John Knox (1514-1572) was the preacher here. His fiery sermons helped turn once-Catholic Edinburgh into a bastion of Protestantism. You think he’d be buried in the church… he is not – he is buried – with appropriate austerity – under the parking lot out back – #23.
Every Scottish burgh (town licensed by the king to trade) had three standard features: a “tolbooth” (basically a Town Hall, with a courthouse, meeting room, and jail; a “tron” (official weighing station); and a “mercat” (or market) cross. The mercat cross standing just behind St. Giles’ Cathedral has a slender column decorated with a unicorn holding a flag with the cross of St. Andrew. Royal proclamations have been read at this mercat cross since the 14th century. In 1952, a town crier heralded the news that Britain had a new queen -three days after the actual event (traditionaly the time it took for a horse to speed here from London). Today, Mercat Cross is the meeting point for many of Edinburgh’s walking tours – both historic and ghostly. Jackie and I took a ghost tour from here to finish off our first night!
The statue to Adam Smith honors the Edinburgh author of the pioneering Wealth of Nations (1776), in which he laid out the economics of free-market capitalism. Smith theorized that an “invisible hand” wisely guides the unregulated free market. Coming so soon after Hume, consider all the intellectual energy in Edinburgh in the mid-1700’s. Smith was in the center of it. He and Hume were good friends. James Boswell, the famed biographer of Samuel Johnson, took classes from Smith. James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, was another proud Scotsman of the age. Minds like these helped Edinburgh create the modern world.
Since the 16th century, this palace has marked the end of the Royal Mile. An abbey – part of a 12th-century Augustinian monastery – originally stood in its place. While most of that old building is gone, the surviving nave can be seen behind the palace to the left. According to one legend, it was named “holy rood” for a piece of the cross, brought here as a relic by Queen (and later Saint) Margaret. Because Scotland’s royalty preferred living at Holyroodhouse to the blustery castle on the rock, the palace grew over time. It was Jackie’s first “glimpse” of royalty – something she really enjoyed!
Finally, after centuries of history, we reach the 21st century. And finally, after three centuries of London rule, Scotland has a parliament building… in Scotland. When Scotland united with England in 1707, its parliament was dissolved. But in 1999, the Scottish parliament was reestablished, and in 2004, it moved into this striking new home. Notice how the eco-friendly building mixes wild angles, lots of light, bold window, oak, and native stones into a startling complex.
Since it celebrates Scottish democracy, the architecture is not a statement of authority. There are no statues of old heroes. There’s not even a grand entry. You feel like you’re entering an office park. Given it’s neighborhood, the media often calls the Scottish Parliament “Holyrood” for short – kinda like how we call the US Congress “Capitol Hill”.
Like I said… one of the great wanders in all of Europe. Here is one last look up the mile at the end of a wonderful day…
