Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
of the original eighteenth-century buildings remain. Across the road, the southern side
looks down onto the basin of Princes Street Gardens which is bisected midway by a
direct route into the heart of the Old Town known as the
Mound
, formed in the 1780s
by dumping piles of earth and other waste brought from the New Town's building plots.
General Register House
2 Princes St • Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm • £10 for a full or part-day's access to the records •
T
0131 535 1314,
W
nas.gov.uk
General Register House,
designed in 1774 by Robert Adam,
is the most distinguished
building on Princes Street. Today it's home to the
ScotlandsPeople Centre
, a dedicated
family history unit which acts as a single point of access for those researching genealogical
records. Visitors can pore over a mixed archive of records ranging from national censuses,
criminal records and, stretching back to 1553, old parish registers of births, marriages and
deaths. A large database complements the physical records and there are a number of
computers for public use if you don't have your own. Part of the appeal of embarking on
some research is the opportunity to spend time in the elegant interior, centred on a
glorious rotunda, lavishly decorated with plasterwork and antique-style medallions.
Princes Street Gardens
Dawn to dusk • Free
It's hard to imagine that the
gardens
which flank nearly the entire length of Princes
Street were once the stagnant, foul-smelling Nor' Loch into which the e
uent of the
Old Town flowed for centuries. he railway has since replaced the water and today a
sunken cutting carries the main lines out of Waverley Station to the west and north.
he gardens, split into east and west sections, were originally the private domain of
Princes Street residents and their well-placed acquaintances, only becoming a public
park in 1876. hese days, the swathes of green lawn, colourful flower beds and mature
trees are a green lung for the city centre: on sunny days local o
ce workers appear in
their droves at lunchtime, while in the run-up to Christmas the gardens' eastern section
is home to a German Market, a towering ferris wheel and a number of other appealingly
lit rides. he larger and more verdant western section has a floral clock and the Ross
Bandstand, a popular Festival venue.
Scott Monument
East Princes Street Gardens • April-Sept Mon-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm; Oct-March Mon-Sat 9am-4pm, Sun 10am-6pm • £4 •
T
0131 529 4068
Facing the Victorian shopping emporium Jenners, and set within East Princes Street
Gardens, the 200ft-high
Scott Monument
was erected in memory of prolific author and
patriot Sir Walter Scott within a few years of his death. he largest monument in the
world to a man of letters, the architecture is closely modelled on Scott's beloved
Melrose Abbey (see p.122), and the rich sculptural decoration shows sixteen Scottish
writers and sixty-four characters from Scott's famous
Waverley
novels. On the central
plinth at the base of the monument is a
statue
of Scott with his deerhound Maida,
carved from a thirty-ton block of Carrara marble.
Inside, a tightly winding spiral staircase climbs 287 steps to a narrow platform near
the top: from here, you can enjoy some inspiring - if vertiginous - vistas of the city
below and hills and firths beyond.
National Gallery of Scotland
The Mound, Princes St • Daily 10am-5pm (until 6pm in Aug & until 7pm Thurs year round) • Free; entrance charge for some temporary
exhibitions •
T
0131 624 6200,
W
nationalgalleries.org
Built as a “temple to the fine arts” in 1850, the
National Gallery of Scotland
houses
Scotland's premier collection of pre-twentieth-century
European art
in the larger of two
grand Neoclassical buildings found at the foot of the Mound (the other building
houses the
Royal Scottish Academy
, which mostly holds temporary exhibitions).
