Charlotte Square is Robert Adam's crowning glory, and the epitome of what Robert Burns called 'the heavenly Hanoverianism' of Edinburgh's New Town with its classic edifices, handsome squares and spacious thoroughfares.

Responding to criticism of some earlier haphazard developments, Adam was specifically commissioned to provide a unified scheme of town houses. His regal north and south sides provide the square with 100m-long palace fronts. Their pedimented centre-pieces, Corinthian pillars and balustrades mirror one another. On the skyline, crowning sphinxes guard pyramid-shaped roofs. The whole concept has a thrilling swagger to it: even the chimney stacks have a dignified air... yet with no sense of over-extravagance. When Adam died in 1792 only the north side was completed. Building, with delays due to the war with France, continued for almost a further quarter of a century. But the result as we see it today is almost as he intended, excepting Robert Reid's monumental domed church, now West Register House. Charlotte Square is rightly recognised as a major achievement in European civic architecture.

Many of the front steps in the Square have iron boot-scrapers, for removing mud before you enter; and built into the iron railings, inverted trumpets in which the 'link boys' who lighted your way home could snuff out their torches, rather than by rubbing them against the expensive stonework. Throughout the New Town, you can see multitudinous scratch-marks from matches used to light these torches.

A distinguished resident of No. 17 was the Judge and conservationist Henry Cockburn, whose Memorials of his Time give the flavour of the social scene in Charlotte Square: 'She would sail in like a ship from Tarshish, with fan, ear-rings, falling sleeves, scent bottle, hoop and train, managing all this with as much ease as a swan its plumage. She would then take possession of a sofa and cover the whole of it with her bravery.'

Cockburn further noted the 'majesty' with which their female occupants would descend from coaches and sedan-chairs. He recorded, too, how from a corner of the Square, he used to listen to the corncrakes in the dewy grass. No.7 Charlotte Square, restored to its original splendour under the National Trust, is open to the public as 'the Georgian House'. It offers visitors an excellent idea of how people – masters and servants – used to live in New Town houses. The centrally positioned No.6 (Bute House) is the official residence of Scotland's First Minister. No.5 was the birthplace of the diarist (and snob) Mrs Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. She dismissed whole families, including in-laws of Sir Walter Scott, as inferiors; but her Memoirs of a Highland Lady colourfully conjure up life in the capital at the start of the 1900s. Her former residence how houses the offices of both Edinburgh World Heritage Tust and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Charlotte Square Gardens are the atmospheric setting for the summer Book Festival. Founded in 1983 as an extension of Scottish PEN's 'Meet the Author' sessions, it is unique in scale and variety. For three weeks each August its meetings of minds transform the gardens into a splendrous, magical tented village where readers of all ages, tastes and nationalities rub shoulders with local and foreign writers, and a fair smattering of Nobel prize-winners. Annually complementing the Edinburgh International Festival, and the ever-expanding Fringe, the Book Festival is an exhilarating reminder of the range and riches of contemporary literature, and its power to hold adults and children in thrall. It holds up a three-way mirror - how the world sees Edinburgh, City of Literature, and how Edinburgh sees Scotland and the world.

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.