Opposite one another on George IV Bridge are the distinctive buildings of the National and Central Libraries. The National Library of Scotland was first stored in a house off Parliament Close, destroyed in the great fire of 1700. Efforts were continually made to find suitable accommodation. The Signet Library, one of classical Edinburgh's most beautiful buildings, was first constructed for the purpose. 

Not until 1925 did the National Library formally come into existence; on the present site, and the Basil Spence building opened in 1956, its art deco panels bearing a representation of the arts and sciences by Hew Lorimer. The Advocates' Library formed the core of the collection which today extends to more than seven million volumes plus maps, manuscripts, and a vast on-line catalogue. A copy of every book published in Britain must be lodged here.

Among the library's treasures are The Chepman and Myllar Prints, which represent the earliest books printed in Scotland, including Blind Harry's Wallace, an 11th Century manuscript Bible, and a 15th century Gutenberg Bible, one of the first examples of printed text in the world. There are also numerous documents including letters by Mary, Queen of Scots, one of the copies of the National Covenant of 1638 and the order which brought about the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692.

In 2006 The National Library of Scotland secured the archive of one of the world's great publishing houses, John Murray, from its founding in 1768 till 1920. It embraces authors and correspondents as diverse as Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin and David Livingstone – and many others whose lives and ideas helped fashion the modern world.  Across the street is the Central Library, founded by Andrew Carnegie. Built in the French style and opened in 1890, it houses collections of Scottish and Edinburgh-related material.  The recently digitised Edinburgh Collection is an unrivalled visual and documentary record of the city.

Originally George IV Bridge northwards from the Central Library consisted of tenements towering over the Grassmarket; with the Z-shaped West Bow winding down. Here again, two worlds were starkly juxtaposed; with what lay far below regarded as the capital's underbelly. At the end of the novel Kidnapped, David Balfour conveys its flavour: "It was coming near noon when I passed in by the West Kirk and the Grassmarket into the streets of the capital. The huge height of the buildings, running up to ten and fifteen storeys, the narrow arched entries that continually vomited passengers, the wares of the merchants in their windows, the hubbub and endless stir, the foul smells and the fine clothes, and a hundred other particulars too small to mention, struck me into a kind of stupor of surprise.'

An enclosed section in the Grassmarket marks the site of the gallows. Those of higher rank (among them the Marquis of Montrose) were executed at the Mercat Cross, but plainer people hanged here. Here Captain John Porteous was lynched, strung from a dyer's pole, and protesting Covenanters died by the score. It was also the site of illegal cock-fights; of horse fairs; and where drovers brought their cattle to market. The Grassmarket's White Hart, where Robert Burns stayed and later William and Dorothy Wordsworth, claims to be the oldest inn in Edinburgh. Thomas De Quincey was in lodgings in the Grassmarket when he conceived his Confessions of an English Opium Eater. At the further end the West Port gained notoriety from mass murderers Burke and Hare, who delivered their victims to Dr Robert Knox 's dissecting rooms in Surgeons' Square: 'Burke's the butcher, Hare the thief / Knox the boy who buys the beef'.

In the 19th century Victoria Street was created to link with George IV Bridge; forming an attractive terrace; replacing West Bow's final lunge uphill. But the old ambience and reputation lingered. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Grassmarket is the setting of local girl Sandy's 'first experience of a foreign country, which intimates itself by its new smells and shapes and its new poor', and where 'some boys shouted after [the] violet-clad company, with words that the girls had not heard before, but rightly understood to be obscene'.

Intriguingly the rear windows of The Elephant House on George IV Bridge, belong to one of the eating places where the then unknown JK Rowling wrote the first of her seven Harry Potter novels. Gaze across the Grassmarket to the turreted Renaissance towers of George Heriot's School, and you have a look and even a name not dissimilar to the fictional and world-renowned Hogwarts school for wizards.

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.