Old and New Towns of Edinburgh

• Official name: Old and New Towns of Edinburgh
• Location: Lothian Region, Scotland
• Type: Cultural
• Year of inscription: 1995

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland in the United Kingdom (UK). The city is in southeast Scotland near a waterway called the Firth of Forth, which connects to the North Sea. Edinburgh covers about 7 miles (11 kilometers) of natural features such as slopes, hills, and valleys, which the city’s structures were built to accommodate. One of the most prominent of these natural features is Castle Rock, part of a long-dead volcano that served early residents as a high ground they used to defend themselves from attacks.

Edinburgh developed over centuries in a famously hilly, craggy location. In the twenty-first century, it is a center of Scottish government, an intellectual hotspot, and a center of military power. The city is known for its educational facilities, brisk business in finance and tourism, and arts and culture. Many Scottish artists and writers of the past and present favor the city, and its patronage of the arts is demonstrated in annual performance festivals.

The modern city began in what is now known as Old Town, which mostly developed during the Middle Ages. Old Town began as a defensive settlement near Castle Rock and grew organically over many centuries. One of the most notable features of Old Town is Edinburgh Castle, built on Castle Rock. Nearby landmarks such as the Royal Mile and the Holyrood Abbey preserve the city’s early roots.

In the 1700s and 1800s, many wealthy citizens moved out of Old Town to build grand neoclassical stone homes and other structures in an area that became known as New Town. Unlike its ancestor, Old Town, New Town mostly developed along the principles of modern-style city planning and features many flourishes, grand buildings, and elegant design styles. Later additions to New Town borrowed some older planning methods and focused more on creating harmony between the natural and human-made environments.

History

The area of Scotland that would become Edinburgh was first visited by humans deep in prehistory. Ancient people used the area’s craggy hills for defense and settlement. Roman forces in the British Isles built fortifications nearby to stabilize the northernmost frontier of their empire in the second century CE. In medieval times, settlements grew in what is today known as Old Town, and Edinburgh became a center of trade, a hub of textile manufacturing, and the site of one of the first mints in Scotland.

Through many years of wars, mainly against England, Edinburgh’s status was further cemented, and by the last half of the 1400s, it had become Scotland’s capital. The bustling city prospered under Scottish kings such as James IV and James V in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Prior to this time, most of the city’s structures were made of wood, making them relatively impermanent and subject to fires. Later, however, stone slowly became a favored building material, making structures that would potentially last for many centuries.

Law, education, and arts thrived as well, and a college—later to become the University of Edinburgh—was founded in the city. Edinburgh became a capital of learning, literature, and other intellectual activity and hosted such notables as philosopher David Hume, economist Adam Smith, poet James Thomson, and novelists Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Over many generations, the growth of the city and advances in architecture created separate zones. The original area came to be known as Old Town, which around 1800 had become unfashionable, with well-to-do residents gravitating toward more modern accommodations in the so-called New Town. The splitting of the residents led to social divisions and conflicts, as well as economic problems. Edinburgh remained a center of activity through the 1800s but mostly shifted to industry and was marked by overpopulation, a lack of food, and rampant disease. The Old Town fell into disrepair until the late 1800s when an urban renaissance returned attention and dignity to that part of the city.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Edinburgh was once again experiencing good fortunes, particularly in the literary and political arenas, and was highly influential in outlining the character of modern Scotland. Following World War II (1939–1945), Edinburgh further developed into its modern state. One of its great developments of the twentieth century was the reinvigorated emphasis on education, which made the city a hotspot for medicine and science, including advanced computer operations.

At the same time, the city’s arts and culture became increasingly prominent, with many thinkers and creative types there embracing their Scottish heritage as well as opening the door to international collaboration. Literature became a hallmark of Edinburgh social and cultural life, and many publishers, large and small, headed to the city to help spread its unique worldview through words.

In 1947, residents founded the Edinburgh International Festival, a citywide festival celebrating drama, music, and other art from Scotland and beyond. World-famous plays have opened or developed during this event, which in the twenty-first century draws thousands of visitors annually. One of the best-known aspects of the event is known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, famous for its sprawling, less-structured approach to performance, which allows participants who were not included in larger activities to express themselves creatively and seek new audiences.

At the same time, Edinburgh’s cultural supporters also set up or restored a wide variety of local galleries, theaters, museums, and concert halls. Examples include the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Traverse Theatre, St. Cecilia’s Hall, and the Richard Demarco Gallery.

By the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, Edinburgh leaders and residents also embraced a new spirit of conservation of their city and culture. Individuals and organizations have sought to protect and preserve the old surviving structures of both Old Town and New Town. They have also endeavored to limit urban sprawl, highway traffic, and other modern forces that might threaten the city’s dignity and legacy. In the twenty-first century, Edinburgh had solidified its place as not only the capital of Scotland but also as a major spiritual and cultural center of that nation.

Significance

In 1995, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre added the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh to the prestigious World Heritage List. UNESCO officials based their decision not only on the history and importance of these regions of Edinburgh but also on their unique architectural layouts. In short, the Old Town demonstrates medieval city planning, and the New Town rose during the distinctive Georgian era of the 1700s and 1800s and displays neoclassical elements that helped to revolutionize modern European architecture and city layouts.

The Old Town covers an area between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood. Its roots extend back many centuries, and many of its existing buildings and layout elements can be traced to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or earlier. Some of these elements include customizing structures to work with the natural background (as opposed to more modern attempts to change the environment to suit the construction). The Old Town features many unusually tall buildings, among the tallest in the world at the time of their creation, that demonstrate the practice of maximizing living space by spreading vertically instead of horizontally in crowded areas. The Old Town also retains the blueprint of “fishbone” street patterns that show the medieval approach to city planning.

Located nearby, yet demonstrating strikingly diverse building styles, is New Town. Most of New Town arose from around 1767 to 1890, at a time when architectural knowledge in Scotland was at a peak. Using the neoclassical style, architects such as John Adam, Robert Adam, and William Chambers created elegant buildings that could rival any in Europe at their time. Unlike the crowded Old Town, New Town created extensive green spaces, including gardens and public meeting spots.

Seen individually, the Old and New Towns are excellent representations of important artistic and architectural periods in Western history. Thanks to a spirit of national pride and preservation, these historical zones have largely been preserved against decay and protected from modern sprawl, making them, in a sense, fully functioning open-air museums. Seen together, Old and New Towns display a strangely harmonious relationship despite their differences, and residents and visitors marvel at the city skyline that combines such a variety of buildings, colors, and styles. The ideas employed in the construction and later preservation of the Old and New Towns proved highly influential throughout Europe.

From a historical point of view, the Old and New Towns provide a remarkably preserved time capsule into Scotland’s past, as well as important insights into the story of the UK and Europe. They show the evolution of cities from largely improvised medieval defensive settlements to the highly structured, scientifically, and artistically advanced Enlightenment-style city planning that came to characterize the 1700s and beyond.

Bibliography

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