Royal Mile Sightseeing
Places to See Royal Mile
Sightseeing in the Old Town | Castlehill | Lawnmarket | High Street | Canongate | The Palace of Holyroodhouse | Holyrood Abbey | Arthur’s Seat & Duddingston | Scottish Parliament
Running through the heart of the medieval Old Town, from the Edinburgh castle down to the Palace of Holyrood-houseHolyrood-house, is the Royal Mile, where you'll find a greater concentration of historic buildings than almost anywhere else in Britain. This street was described by Daniel Defoe (who lived in Edinburgh at the beginning of the 18th century) as "perhaps the largest, longest and finest Street for buildings, and Number of Inhabitants, not in Britain only, but in the world". It is now also one of the busiest tourist thoroughfares in the world, especially during the Festival. Consequently, it's full of shops selling tacky souvenirs, but not even this can detract from its sheer magnificence.
The 1,984 yards of the Royal Mile, from the Castle Keep to the Palace, comprises four separate streets: (from top to bottom) Castlehill, Lawnmarket, the High Street and the Canongate. Branching out from these is a honeycomb of wynds and closes, entered via archways known as pends. A close is the entrance to a 'land' or high-rise tenement block, and wynds are the narrow and winding alleyways giving access to the main street. These were the scene of many important – and sinister – events over the centuries and are certainly worth exploring in detail. Here, the city's aristocracy, gentry, merchants and commoners lived together, often in the same building, with the upper classes at the bottom and the hoi polloi at the top. Until the end of the 18th century, the Old Town was the hub of fashionable society. Indeed, such was the concentration of talent that John Amyat, the King's chemist, remarked that he could stand at the Mercat Cross and "in a few minutes take fifty men of genius by the hand".
At the turn of the 19th century the Old Town was gradually abandoned by the Great and the Good of Edinburgh, who moved lock, stock and barrel to the New Town in what was called 'The Great Flitting'. The Old Town deteriorated into an overcrowded slum. People would throw their refuse and sewage out of the tenement windows onto the street, shouting to the passers-by, below with the traditional warning of "Gardyloo" (from the French garde a l'eau). Not surprisingly, such a place of filth and squalor was highly vulnerable to epidemics and it is only in the past century that the Royal Mile has been cleaned and turned into one of the most fascinating and picturesque streets in the world.