Something old, something new

Published on Thursday 6 April 2006 01:39

IF ONE were to pick seven places in the Edinburgh Old Town and New Town that demonstrate the claims of this extraordinary city to be a wonder of Scotland, a good list might be:

Useful information

Edinburgh & Scotland Information Centre, 3 Princes Street, 0845 225 5121, edinburgh.org

Edinburgh Castle, 0131 225 9846, historic-scotland.gov.uk

Museum of Scotland, nms.ac.uk

National Galleries of Scotland, 0131 624 6200, natgalscot.ac.uk

edinburgh-festivals.comVICTORIA STREET

The charm of any city is often to be seen most clearly its small, tucked-away streets. Sometimes these just work: the scale is the right, the shops are small and individual, there is not too much traffic. Victoria Street, which winds down from George IV Bridge to the Grassmarket is such a street. Above it, there is a pedestrian terrace from which one may look down on what is going on below. There is a shop that makes real leather bags. There is a cheese shop. It is all on a very human scale.

THE COWGATE

Parts of Edinburgh (and Leith too) have become a bit too gentrified (although the gentry, real and aspirational, has to live somewhere). This has not happened in the Cowgate (yet), which still has a good, honest dirty feel to it. The blackened backsides of the buildings rise high from the narrow road, which at night is filled with young drunks, who probably do not realise that they are behaving in exactly the same way as previous generations of topers behaved. The architecture reminds one of just how dramatically Edinburgh is built on different levels. Magnificent, gloomy, and it leads, appropriately, to the morgue.

THE ROYAL SCOTTISH MUSEUM

This is a large Lombardic Renaissance building with a modern addition. The modern addition did not please everybody, but it is lovely inside, and it tells Scotland's story from the ground up. The Great Hall, which dominates the central part of the building, is a great poem of a construction, going right up to the heavens, and making one feel free and light and in exactly the right place. The spirits soar here and we are reminded how important it is that we have great public spaces where every child, no matter his or her condition, no matter how cramped and unhappy his life may be, can stand and look up and feel the dignity of his citizenship and see his inheritance.

GREYFRIARS KIRKYARD

The kirkyard reminds us of who we are and who came before us. Here is the Martyrs' Monument, which is a sacred place. Old religious battles may seem alien to us today, but they can still tell us something about how people felt about freedom and how they were prepared to suffer for their beliefs. The first words of the monument strike that note: "Halt passenger, take heed what you do see/This tomb doth shew, for what some men did die."

This is a monument to moral seriousness, which is an important part of Scotland's gift to the wider world. There is also now a stone to remind us of John Kay, the barber engraver, who gave much fun, and still does.

THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

Why not? This building looks a bit odd when regarded from certain angles and when photographed with one's infra-red camera shows heat escaping in the wrong places. That is to be regretted. There is also a problem with the falling down of the roof.

However, I remember the wise words of a German friend, Michael von Poser - a great conservationist - who said to me: "A building should be allowed to age naturally. And one should take a philosophical view. If your roof falls in, remember that you may have lost a room, but you will have gained a courtyard." Perhaps the MSPs should reflect on those words.

But it is in many ways a beautiful building which says something profound: here, in this spot, the people of Scotland gave themselves a building which expressed their desire to say something, themselves, about their future.

DUNDAS STREET, LOOKING OVER TO FIFE

Craig's New Town was a great creation of rational, ordered town planning. Its long streets and elegant squares could have been dull, but were not. Somehow it all worked, and became beautiful. There is also the setting; here in Dundas Street, one can look down the hill and over to the hills of Fife. I can think of no more beautiful urban view in Scotland, or indeed in Britain. The light changes. Clouds stack up over Fife and then scoot away. The hills are blue, now green, now shrouded in mist, gone away.

THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

More Italianate architecture - a happy muddle of statues and grand halls. This is a place which reminds us of the lives of those who made this country and of the aesthetic ambitions of the Victorian period. There is a also a wonderful place to have lunch, a rather old-fashioned caf of the sort which is such a welcome antidote to the impersonal catering arrangements of our globalised age.

How odd that globalisation could open up the world's cultural riches to the enjoyment of all, but only succeeds in flattening them! Edinburgh still has many interesting corners which seem to survive this process.

7 FACTS

Like Jerusalem and Rome, Edinburgh is a city of seven hills (Blackford, Corstorphine, Braid, Castle, Calton, Arthur's Seat). An essayist said Edin-burgh and Jerusalem were the same place and Arthur's Seat was the true site of Calvary.

The Mound is an artificial hill, made of 1.5 million cartloads of earth from the foundations of Princes Street.

Queen Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle is the oldest and highest building in the city. It is looked after by a society of women all called Margaret.

Mary King's Close is one of the city's most haunted sites. The narrow street below the City Chambers was bricked up at both ends during the plague.

Towards 1800, Edinburgh was a city crowded with genius - Hume, Hutton, Adam Smith and Boswell all lived there and it was said you could meet 50 men of genius standing at the Mercat Cross for an hour.

Both William McGonagall and James Connolly were born in the Cowgate, both a street of palaces and the site of terrible slums in its history.

The Gothic spire of the Scott Monument, featuring 64 of his characters, was inspired by Melrose Abbey.