Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
independent boutiques on curving
Victoria Street
, an unusual two-tier thoroughfare,
with arcaded shops below and a pedestrian terrace above.
1
The Bridges
Leading eastwards from the Grassmarket is the
Cowgate
, one of Edinburgh's oldest
surviving streets. It was also once one of the city's most prestigious addresses, but the
construction of the great
viaducts
of George IV Bridge and South Bridge entombed it
below street level, condemning it to decay and neglect and leading the nineteenth-
century writer, Alexander Smith, to declare: “the condition of the inhabitants is as little
known to respectable Edinburgh as are the habits of moles, earthworms, and the
mining population.” Various nightclubs and Festival venues have established themselves
here - on Friday and Saturday nights the street heaves with revellers - but it remains a
slightly insalubrious spot.
High above the crestfallen Cowgate, both bridges give the curious impression that
you're on ground level thanks to the terraced buildings that rise up in line with the
elevated streets. he lowermost
South Bridge
, leading off from halfway down the High
Street, is unpleasantly congested with buses and garishly untempered retailers, although
it does provide a decent selection of cheap café-restaurants.
By contrast,
George IV bridge
to the west - built in the 1830s - is a sight to behold.
Its many grand Neoclassical buildings rise up from the Cowgate below to reach street
level and many tourists cross it without realizing they are on a bridge at all.
At the southern end of the bridge, tourists invariably crowd around the tiny bronze
statue of a Skye Terrier called Greyfriars Bobby (see box below), while across the road,
Chambers Street links the southernmost ends of the two bridges where you'll find the
unmissable National Museum of Scotland (see p.74).
Greyfriars Kirk
1 Greyfriars • April-Oct Mon-Fri 10.30am-4.30pm, Sat 11am-2pm • Free •
T
0131 225 1900,
W
greyfriarskirk.com
Greyfriars Kirk
was built in 1620 on land that had belonged to a Franciscan convent,
though little of the original late Gothic-style building remains. A fire in the
mid-nineteenth century led to significant rebuilding and the installation of the first
organ
in a Presbyterian church in Scotland; today's magnificent instrument, by Peter
Collins, arrived in 1990.
Outside, the kirkyard has a fine collection of seventeenth-century gravestones and
mausoleums including the grave mourned over by the world-famous canine, Greyfriars
Bobby. Visited regularly by ghost tours (see p.88) the kirkyard was known for
grave-robbing
as freshly interred bodies were exhumed and sold to the nearby medical
school (a crime taken to a higher level by the notorious Burke and Hare, who bypassed
the graveyards by simply murdering the victims they'd then sell on for dissection).
GREYFRIARS BOBBY
The small statue of
Greyfriars Bobby
at the junction of George IV Bridge and Candlemaker
Row must rank as one of Edinburgh's more mawkish tourist attractions. Bobby was a
Skye terrier
acquired as a working dog by a police constable named John Gray. When Gray
died in 1858, Bobby was found a few days later sitting on his grave, a vigil he maintained
until his death fourteen years later. In the process, he became an Edinburgh celebrity, fed
and cared for by locals who gave him a special collar to prevent him being impounded as a
stray. The statue was modelled from life and erected soon after his death. Bobby's legendary
dedication easily lent itself to children's books and was eventually picked up by Disney,
whose 1960 feature film hammed up the story and ensured that streams of tourists have
paid their respects ever since.
