To the south, black and severe, rise the chimneys and steeples of the Old Town; teeming 'lands' and cliff-like tenements, perhaps the world's first skyscrapers. They trace the jagged spine of the volcanic ridge as it descends from the Castle. You can see the tower of St Giles, like a royal crown; the spires of St John's and the Tron Kirk; and lower down the Royal Mile, the Canongate Tolbooth.

Northwards you see the Georgian New Town with its grid of spacious streets, its classical elegance and abundant greenery. The broad thoroughfare of Princes Street, and its gardens - once a glacial hollow - form a fault-line and a barrier between. On Calton Hill are Playfair's Royal Observatory; an uncompleted National Monument to the dead of the Napoleonic Wars - once known as Edinburgh's Disgrace; Nelson's Tower, like a huge telescope; and a small Doric temple to the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and biographer Dugald Stewart. It was he who famously christened Edinburgh 'the Athens of the North' though our Parthenon is incomplete.

The two sides of Edinburgh have inspired memorable writing, from Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which good and evil in the same personality are destructively brought to life; to James Hogg's masterpiece, The Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Here the central character is confronted in swirling mist on the Crags near Arthur's Seat by a döppelgänger, a monstrous apparition with his own brother's face.

The American author Washington Irving reported: "It seemed as if the rock and castle assumed a new aspect every time I looked at them; and Arthur's Seat was perfect witchcraft. I don't wonder that anyone residing in Edinburgh should write poetically."   Bathing off Portobello beach, James Hogg looked back to the dramatic skyline: "Isna Embro a glorious city?  Sae clear the air, yonner you see a man and a woman stannin on the tap o' Arthur's Seat!"

The north slope of Calton Hill looks down on Picardy Place, the birthplace of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Homes, the world's most famous literary detective.  Nearby, an irate poet Robert Burns strode down Leith Walk, a sapling in his hand, seeking royalties from his publisher William Creech. Beyond lies the port of Leith where Mary Queen of Scots was welcomed from France in 1561; and where in the 1650s a conquering Oliver Cromwell built his fortifications. Burns' song, 'The Silver Tassie' is set at The Shore in Leith as the departing adventurer sails out to a ship moored in the Firth of Forth.

Edinburgh's landscape and its duality feature in many novels, such as Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The Old Town and its Crags provide settings for today's crime writers Ian Rankin and Quentin Jardine, while James Robertson has explored disguised identities in the louche honeycomb of cellars under the Royal Mile. The title of Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street is a fictional number in an actual street which the author locates 'on the edge of the Bohemian part of the Edinburgh New Town, the part where lawyers and accountants were outnumbered – just – by others.' Finally Renton, the narrator of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, recalls Princes Street as 'hideous', with the Castle 'just another building', but even he concedes: "But when ye come back oot ay Waverley Station eftir bein away fir a bit, ye think: Hi, this isnae bad."

This material was commissioned and produced by Edinburgh World Heritage and Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, with support from the Scottish Arts Council.  The scripts were written by Edinburgh poet and author, Stewart Conn, and performed by Shonagh Price and Donald Smith, with additional editorial material by Donald Smith.

All material is copyright Edinburgh World Heritage and Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust unless otherwise stated.