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Path to this page:Edinburgh: Stories in Stone
Welcome to Edinburgh - a City of Literature and a World Heritage Site - a place where authors and architects have built a city of words and wonders.
This unique 'built' heritage of Edinburgh, its architectural quality and diversity of design led to the Old and New Town being jointly recognised by the world's largest cultural organisation, UNESCO, as a World Heritage Site. Where else on such a scale can be found their contradictions of old and new: the crooked, crowded romance of the one, cheek-by-jowl with the formal classicism of the other?
Moreover, Edinburgh has been 'a hotbed of genius'; sprouting philosophers, economists, artists, scientists, publishers, printers... and writers. It is this history, allied to today's vibrant literary scene, which saw Edinburgh become the world's first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004.
From the dark closes came dark tales, and from the dazzling spires and monuments, the inspiration for stories that have lasted through the centuries. So take a step-by-step journey through the literature and landscape of Edinburgh and discover a city ‘built on books’ as well as stone.
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Calton Hill
Start your literary tour of Edinburgh from the place with the best view of the city, according to Robert Louis Stevenson. See the Old and New Towns symbolic of the two sides of Edinburgh epitomised in Stevenson's famous characters Jekyll and Hyde.
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The Mound
Worried cats, drowned dogs, two sphinxes and wild beast shows - all this, and a Gothic space rocket. Find out why Charlotte Bronte thought Edinburgh was just great, and what George IV wore under his kilt.
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Hanover Street
In contrast to the untamed jumble of the Old Town, Edinburgh's New Town was all about classical elegance, 'beauty and regularity', but behind the facade not all was so orderly - drinking, snobbery and poets that grew on trees.
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Heriot Row
Deep in the New Town, Heriot Row became one of the great Edinburgh streets. It was the home of a certain young Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde lurked in the dark shadows of this venerable address.
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Lawnmarket
The 'Auld Reekie' may have been a bit on the wiffy side, but its cramped closes and towering tenements housed a hotbed of creativity and a host of famous names in the fields of philosophy and poetry.
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The Netherbow
The storytelling tradition lives on in Edinburgh's literature quarter where John Know resided in a fairytale house designed by Mary Queen of Scots' architects... and Daniel Defoe got rubbish thrown at him.
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Canongate
Find out the story of poor poet Robert Fegusson, who captured the spirit of Edinburgh in his strident Scots verse. You can see him forever striding down the Royal Mile, his statue outside Canongate Church.
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The University & the Enlightenment
With a prestigious list of alumni including David Hume, Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlyle and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it is no wonder Tobias Smollett called Edinburgh University a 'hot-bed of genius.
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Victoria Street & the Grassmarket
Descend the curve of Victoria Street to Edinburgh's dark underbelly - the Grassmarket - where hangings were the entertainment of the day, and mass murderers Burke and Hare did a nice line in bodies.
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Charlotte Square
Even the chimney stacks have a dignified air in Robert Adam's Charlotte Square, a major achievement in European civic architecture, and now the setting for the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
